Hell Creek Gar Reproduction Now Available

ValDaGar in initial stages of preparation

Back in the summer of 2012, known as the summer of "Lake Dakota" in the lab due to how much it rained that year keeping us at our soggy campsite, I was lucky enough to discover an articulated gar in the Hell Creek Formation. In the previous decade of Hell Creek fieldwork, I had found hundreds of scales and isolated bones from gar but hadn't given them much thought. 

Hell Creek gar scales

Perhaps it was because of all the rain that year, but late on our first trip out to South Dakota for that season on a low, soft, sandy outcrop I found vertebrae, articulated scales and the outline of a skull just beginning to erode out. I had no idea at the time just how special that discovery would be. It turns out this specimen - RMDRC 12-008 - which I nicknamed "ValDaGar" after my wife giving it a bit of Nordic sounding flair, was the most complete articulated gar fossil out of the entire Mesozoic of North America. 

RMDRC 12-008 ValDaGar as originally found, with beautiful articulated scales

The excavation was pretty straightforward. Our now Executive VP Jacob Jett and I managed to perimeter around the specimen through the soft sand and jacketed the gar all in one day. Unfortunately there were no sizeable outcrops immediately adjacent to the dig to help place us in section, however a butte a short distance away had a Triceratops skeleton eroding out approximately 60 feet above our dig, indicating we were definitely working on a Cretaceous gar, not a later one from the post-asteroid Fort Union Formation. 

Jacob Jett cleaning out the trench before jacketing

I'm not going to lie, I was a bit nervous when it came time to prepare the specimen. The matrix was very soft, which poses quite a few challenges, especially when you're set to work on an animal that is basically a tube sock made of 10,000 scales floating in loose formation in the sand. Since this specimen was extremely rare and scientifically important, I went very slowly.

Initial prep of the skull area in the lab

Much of the initial work was done with just an X-acto knife and chip brushes, slowly working down to the specimen until you feel and hear the "thunk" of the underlying bone or scale. Once the bulk of the matrix was moved off a section, I stabilized it with Paraloid B72 and came back with low pressure air abrasion to finish cleaning the surface. All this was done one section at a time so that the air abrasion wouldn't blow away any adjacent patch of scales that may not have been consolidated yet. 

Skull area after basic consolidation and air abrasion

In the end, prep took me about a solid week. After the specimen was cleaned, we wondered how to replicate this rare (and likely new taxon) gar. Traditional silicone molding techniques were rejected right away due to the danger the demolding process might pose to such a soft and delicate specimen. It would be a shame to rip it apart after all of this work so we turned to technology.

Skeleton after prep, Senior Curator for scale

We were curious how the specimen looked hidden under the surface of scales and sand, and what might be present for the lower jaws that were spun under the skull. For this we took it to a local animal hospital, Powers Pet Emergency in Colorado springs to have it CT scanned in between patients. There were concerns that the metal poles used in stabilizing the field jacket might interfere with the scans however no problems were noted and the images they turned out just fine. 

Image taken of the skull area at Powers Pet Emergency

Luckily though 3d scanning was very much still in its infancy at the time, we at TPI had the equipment and skill to create a very high fidelity surface scan and model of ValDaGar. Turning the digital model into something physical would take a bit more time though, as we thought the resolution of the printers used in making such a large print was insufficient for what we wanted the final product to be. Fast forward about a decade. Luckily for us, technology has caught up enough to allow a high fidelity physical replica to be made. 

Scanning of ValDaGar in our collections area

We were able to print it out, though not all in one piece. That's where I came in, reassembling the parts and getting it ready for our skilled artists to detail and paint up. The detail was fantastic, especially with the diamond plate skin resolution.

With this step finished, we are now able to offer reproductions of this Mesozoic gar for museums across the world. Contact Jacob Jett jacob@rmdrc.com for specifics and to make your order.

Project Kevin Part 2: The Kevining

Project Kevin is complete (for now, we have to invent a body and that might be... interesting)! The last time I updated this, I had left you at "We dug stuff up and were making it as pretty as it could be" in the lab. That left us with a pile of neat looking bones, but of course we wanted more. Did we have enough to make a skull? And if so, what did it look like? We sure thought we did based on what we identified, though since the site was trampled int he Cretaceous most bones were missing chunks.

One of the mostly complete brow horns

First things first though. Let's laser scan (alright not a laser, but an Artec Spider structured light scanner) all the things! This gives us a good baseline to record what we have. These scans can also be shared with interested researchers across the planet. Researchers are usually pretty happy giving opinions of things and many helped us with details on how this thing might come back together.

Right maxilla in digital form

We can also try out new things with the scans. I came up with an interesting idea to print a 30% scale model of all the parts (using mirrored parts if one side was missing or just incomplete/really ugly). We popped off the parts on our Formlabs Form2 (the 30% scale was determined by the size of the build plate of the printer, these SLA printers can be pretty small) and tried to put together a model to guide us. We goofed though.

The first draft, complete with all our errors

Turns out we had the brow horns on backwards. Also the fits between the bones weren't as accurate as we would have liked. So we fixed them on a small scale before committing on the casts and prints of the full scale stuff. It also gave us the ability to try out things like a scaled and computationally-squished rostrum to make a part that we were completely missing. In this case we printed out a bunch of different possibilities and fit them on until we had a result that looked plausible.

Second draft of scale model, now we get to try out different beaks

With this information in hand, 4 binders of papers as references and a pile of casts, we were ready to take a stab at reconstructing the skull. Lainie and Grace really did a heck of a job learning these techniques. Printing out full size mirrored parts make the skull more accurate and easier to reassemble than if we were to sculpt the missing bits from scratch.

3D prints, casts, lots of epoxy putty and Bondo. Lainie for scale

Things went pretty smoothly till someone (who shall remain nameless) suggested our minimum length conservative frill was probably much too short. The first draft was based only on the length of the frill parts that were preserved. Chasmosaurines like this have seriously long frills though so we took their advice and busted out the sawzall. It was only plastic after all.

OK, let's move this frill about a foot to the back I really think it looks better this way.

We also had to make teeth. Hydrospan 100 was wonderful for this. We poured it into a mold of Ava (RMDRC 12-020)'s dentary and made a floppy cast. This material was then soaked in water until it expanded enough to fit the tooth rows for Kevin. Then we molded it, poured a bunch of plastic copies and played dinosaur dentist for a few days getting over 100 rows of teeth in all the jaws.

We molded all the finished parts and made casts. The skull was cut apart to make the molding process easier. A single mold for the top of the skull would have been huge, complicated and really heavy.

This is what a Kevin skull kit would contain if you bought one

Grace and Lainie making a huge mold for the frill

We put the prototype together in just a few days. It was a lot bigger than we expected. But after paint and finishing, I thought it went together pretty well! Technology really helped us out on this one, saving us materials, time and most importantly effort. I don't think we could have gotten it done by the deadline without it. Now it's time to figure out where this belongs in the family tree.

The prototype is done!

And the obligatory "Curator for scale" photo. I forgot to suck in my gut.

Here's what we put together for the left side, and where we got it from.

First Kansas Trip in the Bag - 2017

For the first time in a few years, we've been able to hit the Niobrara outcrops in the spring! Holy crap was it cold. The last day out, I don't think it got above 50 degrees, not that the 40mph winds would make it feel any warmer. Perfectly miserable. And just like clockwork, on our last day, as the sun was setting behind a large row of thunderstorms on the horizon, we found the best skeleton of the trip! The rest of the time was staring at blank ground finding fossil poop.

Look at this swirly poop!

I entertained myself by finding a "nice" Xiphactinus tail. I was instructing a new hire on how to actually find fossils in pretty bleak badlands when I saw just a small fragment of tail fin coming out of the rock. I'm happy I found this one as since we have SO MANY Xiphactinus specimens in storage, we've implemented a "one in, one out" policy on these fish and I've somewhat jokingly insinuated firing anyone that finds another of these darn fish. Our newbies were safe.

Well, there's a fish tail

Jesse using a chainsaw to trench around the fossil

When you find weathered out fish tail chunks, you have to chase them in (even if they're "just" a Xiphactinus). Sometimes the rest of the tail is there. Sometimes there's the rest of a 15 foot long fish attached to it. Sometimes it just ends. In this case, we found a perfect lower lobe of the fin, but no body. As far as we were from the truck, I'm happy we didn't have to make a huge jacket, since those are heavy and I'm getting lazy in my old age.

Trenching complete, curatorial boot for scale

Jacketing complete and ready to flip, other curatorial boot for scale

Popping it out and prepping it was also quick. Measuring the vertebrae we found it's the exact same size to complete another Xiphactinus specimen we excavated 3 years ago (which just happened to be missing the tail). This will help us out tremendously when we panel mount the animal in the near future.

Not too shabby!

Other stuff was less plentiful on this first trip, but we were lucky enough to find parts of 3 sea turtles, which is always really nice.

Jesse and grace entrusted with power tools to get to a turtle

And of course at the very last minute, Jesse stumbled on a pretty complete Clidastes skull in an outcrop near where we discovered our gigantic 17 foot Xiphactinus specimen 20 years ago. We worked very hard to excavate the specimen with daylight fading and weather bearing down on us.

Jesse and grace getting Clidastes block ready for jacketing

The specimen was safely loaded in the truck by headlight, which also made for a really interesting drive through farm fields in the dark at the end of a 14 hour day. Prep is going on right now, so stay tuned to see how this cute little mosasaur turns out!

Pete III finished. For now.

Just for the weekend, the prototype cast of our Daspletosaurus Pete III (RMDRC 06-005) will be shown off in the atrium of the museum, before it gets decent photographs and heads to its forever home. Yes, it has a 2006 specimen number.

The original site as found/explored in July 2005. We were so young.

We've been working on this for a decade. I'm not sure if I should take the day off to celebrate, or take advantage of the free time of getting a huge project off my plate and start something new and exciting. In the meantime, enjoy some of the snowy photos, better well-lit ones to come in a week.

So, this is what a pile of Daspletosaurus looks like

It just looks like such a fast critter, not like dumpy Tyrannosaurus

Nearly 11m of birdy goodness

Daspletosaurus Assembly: Building a Frightful Lizard

There is actually a very good reason why I haven't updated this blog in a while: We've been up to our armpits in the lab building the prototype cast copy of Pete III, our 11m Daspletosaurus.

Ilium cast fresh in the mold

Progress is going quick by Academic standards, and we hope to finish the cast by early May.

Both feet before assembly

Jacob and I called "dibs" on making this skeleton, since we've been working on the project for 10 years.

We just admired this for a few days

It really is a great thing to see all this hard work finally amount to something tangible

Making the pubis. It is no longer blue

Plus everyone loves a huge tyrannosaur, especially one way more rare than T. rex.

Progress as of a few days ago. Tail is 17 feet (5.2m) long

Stay tuned for some more exciting progress really soon. We're finishing the neck, working out the gastral basket and have a few cervical ribs to go. 

Please welcome the new "Avaceratops"

It's a happy day when we get to unleash a brand new dinosaur on the world. After 3 years of hard work and a lot of sweat, we get to show off our new primitive centrosaurine ceratopsian!

The newest skeletal, copyright Scott Hartman, used with permission

The skelton in all it's glory, Curator for scale

The bones of the specimen that were recovered, copyright Scott Hartman, used with permission

We discovered the specimen at the end of August 2012 on private land in central Montana. The specimen was found near the top of the Judith River Formation, in rocks approximately 75 million years old. You may notice we are using the name "Avaceratops" in quotes here. We're not trying to be coy or mysterious, but with the stratigraphic difference (our specimen is about 3 million years younger than the holotype) and the differences in skull morphology highlighted below, we have come to the conclusion that this is a different animal than true Avaceratops lammersi.

Someone put a lot of work into this. Tell me who you are so I can give credit!

The skull is quite different in detail. It totally lacks a nose horn, and the long brow horns (until recently a rarity in centrosaurine ceratopsians) point forward and even slightly back towards each other, much different than the other two known skulls. It's large "forehead" area is more reminiscent of the recently described Nasutoceratops, from about the same time in Utah.

Overall, the skeleton is 3.5m long and about 1.2m tall. We estimate the critter was about 3 to 4 years old when it died, both based on its relatively small size and the extensive lack of fusion in its skeletal elements. It's pelvis was reassembled from over 30 separate elements. What a job.

Digging down into the quarry site

After the dinosaur died, it's partially mummified body washed down a stream channel until it hit a logjam composed of not only actual logs, but the limb bones of a large hadrosaur. Here it lodged upside down and then began to partially disarticulate. Some of the dried skin over the hips was surprisingly well preserved though, as addressed in an earlier blog post. A few tyrannosaur teeth were found at the site, but we feel those were incidental background fossils, as no predation or scavenging marks were observed on the bones.

Tyrannosaur tooth found at the site

After all this painstaking work in sometimes miserable conditions, we are excited to share the product of this discovery with the rest of the world. After getting unveiled to the press on Wednesday, September 16 at 10:00am the mounted skeleton will be on display at the RMDRC for just a few weeks before making its first trip to Dallas, TX for the 75th meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. You must come see it!

The mount showing the horn shapes (and absences)

Rear view of skeleton

Digging the middle half of a Triceratops

We've finished the Triceratops dig that I announced in my last blog post. We got pretty much everything from the rear of the neck to the back of the hips, minus the limbs. It looks like the specimen was well laid out in order, unfortunately with the head end going off the edge of the cliff. Just a couple thousand years too late, but oh well. There was an unconformity at the top of the site that destroyed the higher bones, including shearing the bottom 4/5 of the femur away. Sometimes nature isn't nice to us. Enjoy the pics!

Scary bobcat driving to get rid of overburden

Mike not finding anything, Jacob on the hips

Naptime in the shade while employees roast

Hips isolated

Cap jacket on hips and attempting to recover a whole rib

Big jacket done after a seriously long day

Prep on the main hips block is going slowly, but we hope to have this monster chunk of bone out on display later this week.

Progress on the jacket but still lots to go