The year is coming to an end soon, but we are still busy developing new skeletal mounts for museums all across the world. Recently, while I was away in England for the SVP Annual Meeting, our founder Mike Triebold led a crew to the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia to install the very first reconstructed skeleton of the humongous Cretaceous crocodilian Deinosuchus schwimmeri.
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| Deinosuchus osteoderms mounted on the skeleton |
Deinosuchus fossils are found all over North America in Campanian aged sediments. D. riograndensis is known from the Big Bend region of Texas, D. hatcheri from Montana and Utah, and to the east there is D. rugosus originally discovered in North Carolina. In 2020, Chris Brochu described a new species from Appalachia, Deinosuchus schwimmeri, named after David Schwimmer.
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| This David Schwimmer doesn't have a fossil named after him |
No, not THAT David Schwimmer. The one in this case is an accomplished paleontologist from Georgia who has worked extensively with fossils of this giant crocodilian. It is a great coincidence that the actor that played a paleontologist (sorta) on Friends shares the same name, but this species is definitely not named after him.
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| Assembling the skull prints |
In 2024, TPI crews visited several museums to scan and digitize as much Deinosuchus material as possible. Digitally, we reconstructed the bones to take out distortion or complete missing parts. Basing the skeleton off of modern animals helped us come up with an accurate skeleton, and we sized it up to the largest known material. We even dissected an alligator and used a dermestid beetle colony to clean the skeleton for reference. This was very handy because it enabled us to make a complete set of osteoderms for our reconstruction. The skull was a unique challenge since printing out in one giant piece would take a long time on FDM printers, with poor detail. We ended up making it in many smaller pieces in SLA printers, which then had to be assembled before molding.
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| If it were alive today, I wouldn't go near the water |
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| TPI crew laying out parts before assembly begins |
Building the specimen was tricky as the entire thing ended up being about 9 meters long. The Tellus Museum wanted it portrayed in a "high walk" pose, which gave us a good opportunity to show off the details we put into the gastralia and sternal elements.
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| The assembled skeleton in our atrium |
The pose also demanded a tight curvature to the tail to fit into the exhibit area, which was already built and partially occupied by an Appalachiosaurus skeleton that we had provided when the museum first opened many years ago. That poor theropod had to move a little bit to make room, but it worked out well. The team did an amazing job on all parts of the process, and the installed specimen looks fantastic.
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| Mike, Krieg and John after completing the delivery in Georgia |
