Pete III Final Update: In Its Forever Home

This post has been a long time coming. A little over 13 years from when we first dug a hole in the ground for a toe fragment in Central Montana, our giant Daspletosaurus sp. "Pete III" is now on permanent display at the Cincinnati Museum Center! A photo of Pete's metatarsal was prominently featured in my first blog post here way back in 2010. We put over a decade into excavating, preparing, scanning, molding, casting and assembling this specimen (click these links to go directly to the older content). I'm happy that it's finally done, but I'm kinda sad to see it go all the same.

The original hole in the ground, field season 2005

The first ugly toe. It got better.

You can search all those old posts on the blog for progress, but now I'd like to share with you the finished product! We mounted all of the original bones (minus the skull, those bones are still loose and in the collections in Cincinnati) on an external steel armature with removable brackets so that anything that needs to be taken off of display for research can easily be done. Daspletosaurus is much more rare than "boring old" Tyrannosaurus rex so the research value of this specimen should be high.

Copies of this ungual can be purchased at www.deeptimefossils.com

The mount itself is a fairly conservative pose, not really running, not really mouth-wide-open. Viewed from near the Allosaurus, it seems to tower over the city skyline (hold the Chili). The restored art deco hall that Pete III now calls home is an exhibit itself and was very well done.

I really like this shot

We tried to make the supporting steel as visually unobtrusive as possible while still being substantial enough to do its job of holding up hundreds of pounds of real bone (and quite a bit of super glue). There might just be as much steel by weight as original bone in this mount, but it really doesn't feel like it.

Every bone gets its own personal mounting steel support

We're really happy how this mount turned out and now all you tyrannosaur researchers out there know who to talk to about planning a visit and publishing. No more excuse to pretend it doesn't exist anymore! And if you notice, things look "unfinished" in the photographs. This is because I helped install it back in August, so if you have better pictures of the display from your next visit I'd love to see them! Here's to thousands and thousands of visitors liking this specimen just as much as we do!

The finished mount, curator for scale

An even better photo without the curator

Pete's huge (as far as tyrannosaurs go) arm

Restoring a Brontosaurus

Growing up in the 80's and 90's was a strange time for a dinosaur fan. On one hand there was a plethora of old books in the library on dinosaurs telling us all about Brontosaurus. On the other, we were getting it beat into our heads that Brontosaurus didn't exist, and it's really Apatosaurus. It was all confusing for those few of us that were actually actively interested in these animals. Today Emanuel Tschopp published a paper resurrecting the genus Brontosaurus as valid. Where does this come in? In college I was lucky enough to work on sauropods, but never on the most famous ones. That all changed almost 8 years ago.

Our company was hired to reprepare, restore, remount, mold and cast the "Apatosaurus" specimen on display at the University of Wyoming geological Museum. This massive beast, also known as the "Sheep Creek" specimen after where it was found, was discovered and excavated in 1902 by a Carnegie Museum crew led by the great John Bell Hatcher. The specimen (CM 563) went back to Pittsburgh where it was quickly prepared in an effort to get the beast mounted and on display. Just before the mounting process was to start, an even more complete beast was recovered. Priorities shifted, and the new Apatosaurus went on display. It's still there at the Carnegie, remounted just a few short years ago.

The old mount, a young Brent for scale

CM 563 sat in storage for nearly a half a century until Dr. Samuel Knight from the University of Wyoming arranged for the specimen to be brought to their museum. He spearheaded the effort to restore incomplete bones, fabricate missing ones and get the whole specimen mounted in a current (for then) pose. The tail-dragging pose didn't age well, especially after the "dinosaur renaissance" which re-imagined these animals as more dynamic beasts.

Pubis bones never mounted on the old mount. Old Carnegie numbers still on them

Where do we come in? Director at that time Dr. Brent Breithaupt contacted us as a local (ish) company that could make copies and provide the museum with a revenue stream with the royalties from sales. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? With 100 years of work on a specimen, you know it never is!

before and after pics of the bones. Yes, originals were painted back in the day.

Hardware cloth, plaster and metal rod restoration from 1950's

Once we had everything in the shop we used special techniques to clean the specimen of its coating of paint to reveal several generations of restoration and conservation work. Everything except for the pelvis/sacrum, which was left on its pedestal and molded in place. It was also the set up for an epic April Fool's joke, but that's a story for another time. In any case, we were able to preserve the historic numbering on the specimen (including some possible field numbers), document its condition, and restore the specimen to good as new condition.

Molding the pelvis in situ

We mounted the skeleton back at the museum in nearly the same pose (sauropods are huge, so unless you have a big open building, your options are limited). One major change though was getting that dragging tail off the ground and up in the air. Much better! You can now see cast copies of this specimen in museums across the world. I'm lucky enough to have worked on this historic specimen of Brontosaurus parvus.

Swinging its tail over Big Al.

Xiphactinus project update

Yep, it's still ongoing.

We have assembled the skull, vertebrae and caudal fin into the mount, and stuck on the first layer of our fake matrix. We remove all matrix from the specimen and make our own for one very good reason: natural chalk is very soft, and is prone to breaking and cracking. It usually offers no meaningful support for the specimen, so it is better for us and the fossil to remove it completely and install our own.

Jacob hard at work filling gaps between vertebrae with epoxy putty

Next up on the docket is to lay out the sets of ribs and pectoral fins, and fasten them to the mount. That process should take about a week, so check back on the next update for progress!

Xiphactinus mounting: The beginning

One of the "nearest forest fires" in the lab lately is getting the world's largest Xiphactinus audax skeleton, RMDRC 08-004 "Mildred" prepared and mounted. These fish are traditionally done as a panel mount, since usually they are a bit flattened, especially with articulated skull material. Single-pieces are preferred since mating up seams on a big flat panel is just kinda ugly. Unfortunately, when dealing with a mount of the biggest of anything, that usually means a BIG mount.

The underside of the skull. We put a support material on this side to stabilize the bones

In this case, the panel is sized to 7 feet tall and 21 feet long, the appropriate size for an 18 1/2 foot long fish. It's going to be heavy no matter what we do, but our goal is to end up with a contraption weighing in at about half a ton or so when we're finished. One can dream.

Just a small fabrication project

We've already finished preparation of Mildred's bones, as well as the needed parts of the "donor" parts fish that would be used to fill in pieces lost to erosion or scavenging sharks. On the 3 fish, we've recovered well over a dozen shed Squalicorax falcatus teeth that were lost when the carcasses were getting scavenged.

Jacob and Lisa bolting the plywood to the frame

The next step is to position the bones on the panel and affix them to the background material. We use some cast parts, as well as the complete skull, vertebral column and tail to get an idea of the size, pose, and margins of the fish. It's always good to figure this out before we start attaching stuff with adhesive. On the downside, it doesn't look very pretty yet, but it gives us a glimpse of how the final product will look.

As of this morning, with the body outline sketched on

 There's still a lot of work to do, but we're confident we can make the deadline now.

The things you find when you work on stuff

Mildred's skull, with blue tape to mark parts that need to be removed

We've almost entirely finished the preparation of RMDRC 11-021 "Lois", the last parts donor fish for our reconstruction of RMDRC 08-004 "Mildred". We've been going through some of the pieces of chalk that fell out of the huge main jacket when it partially collapsed when we flipped it for removal from the digsite. Sometimes these things happen, especially when the chalk is weathered and fractured.

Feathery and fine gill structures articulated with the arches

Surprisingly one of the chalk pieces produced something very rare: the actual preserved gill structure of this Xiphactinus. Usually with most Xiphactinus specimens, the disarticulation of the skull by scavengers results in these delicate structures being lost. On articulated skulls, they are likely present however no one ever starts removing bones to investigate if they are indeed there. For now they remain pretty rare things. We won't be using these in our restoration, hopefully we can find a good home to donate them to.

Jacob and Lisa fastening plywood to the steel tube frame

In other news on the reconstruction front, we've finished building the frame for Mildred. 21 feet long, 7 feet tall, it's going to be 150 square feet of big bad X-fish. Nearly time to put it on a rolling stand so we don't have to lift it ever again!

Lois gets prepped! Mostly!

It is unusual for us to move so quickly from collection to preparation and mounting, but sometimes the stars align. We're currently working on mounting the largest skeleton of Xiphactinus audax ever found, RMDRC 08-004 "Mildred". Unfortunately, the sharks got ahold of the carcass before it sank to the seafloor. They eviscerated it, and it is now missing most of its secondary fins, as well as chunks of ribs and spines. For a display specimen, this isn't really ideal, so we're using a few donor fish (ones that are way too incomplete for display on their own) for parts. These will be incorporated to complete the skeleton of the mounted fish, and their parts will be documented so not to make anyone think the composite skeleton is just a single animal.

Initial site view at TPI takeover

Jackhammers are a backsaver

Lois (RMDRC 11-021) was discovered early in 2011 by another fossil hunter that had mistakenly been scouting on property that was under contract with TPI. No big deal though, our crews came out to the site shortly afterwards and recovered the specimen.

Later in the day, big big hole

It was largely disarticulated and found with its caudal fin rays all around the skull region: the proverbial "head up it's butt" position that we frequently find fossil animals. The low rise over the fish was removed with a Bobcat and we set about finding the perimeter, or extent of the specimen.

Mike with chainsaw, Jacob for scale (2 meters)

Unfortunately the jackstrawed nature of the bones meant we'd have to remove the main part in a substantial field jacket. I don't like doing that, big jackets are heavy.

Cleaning the undercut for jacketing

Lois has somewhat flakier bone than usual for a fish, mainly because much of it was near the erosional edge, making preparation a bit slow and less than easy. The smaller jacket is nearly finished, as well as the individual parts we were able to remove on site. The large jacket may take a few more days to show prep, due to the bone condition. It will however be very useful in completing the original bone mount of Mildred, which will be started in the next week.

Just a photo of learning marker units in the field

Just a Pretty Picture

Ok, maybe not so pretty because I've volunteered myself to be the RMDRC spokesmodel. Just consider yourself lucky I didn't accessorize with a bikini.