It has been a
while here, and this time for a good reason: I got a job now. How is another
story, but I am now a research assistant to Dr. Dennis Marinus Hansen, who is
the exhibit manager of the Zoological
and Paleontological Museum of Zürich (come visit us if you are ever close,
the entry is free!). And Dennis probably needs all the help he can get right
now, because the museum is undergoing some radical changes that he is in charge
of. One of these is the addition of at least four new, genuine dinosaur skeletons for a
new exhibit in 2023. But where will those skeletons come from? The
Sauriermuseum Aathal of course, which you hopefully still remember from
last year on this blog. Because it is a private museum, Kirby Siber, not
being the most youthful anymore, has decided to not burden his children with
the ownership of some of the massive dinosaurs and is instead donating the
scientifically most valuable finds his team made in the Morrison Formation to
the Zoological Museum. For now this includes Big Al II, an Allosaurus
jimmadseni more complete than the first Big Al, the Diplodocus carnegii
HQ1, the Nanosaurus Barbara, baby-sauropod Toni and the Hesperosaurus
Victoria (later down the line we will also get the Camarasaurus E.T., Arky the Camptosaurus and the so-far-indeterminate
diplodocid Arapahoe). However, these skeletons will not directly come to us now,
but will instead go on a little tour over half the globe to a special event in
Hong Kong. Two weeks ago there was therefore a test-assembly of the skeletons
going on at the Sauriermuseum for the HK-correspondents, and since this was a
good opportunity for our museum to make some assessment for our own future
exhibit as well, Dennis took me with him.
The skeleton in
question was the aforementioned Victoria (SMA 0018), a specimen of Hesperosaurus
mjosi, which you can see here above how it stood in the museum last year in
its old mounting. It was found by the Aathal team in 1997 at the Howe-Stephens
Quarry in Wyoming, alongside two other Hesperosaurus-specimens, Moritz (SMA M04)
and Lily (SMA L02). All three of them are mostly complete, even including their skulls. Victoria and her siblings were originally classified as Stegosaurus
(and some material you might encounter still labels them as such), which is
because the genus Hesperosaurus would not be described until 2001 and
Victoria was not recognized as belonging to that genus until 2010 (Christiansen
& Tschopp 2010). Victoria stands out in two ways: first, she is very
massive compared to her siblings, which I only realized after standing right
next to the specimens. While Moritz is about the size of a donkey (not counting
the backplates), Victoria has dimensions comparable to a rhinoceros. You
definitely would not have wanted to meet her in an angry mood. Second: Victoria
preserves integument-impressions, not just of the skin but also the surface of
the iconic backplates. These show pretty conclusively that at least in some
stegosaurs, these plates were covered in a keratinous sheath (Christiansen & Tschopp 2010).
Apart from that I
do not have much to tell you apart from what happened that day. First off, we
had to section off the pterosaur-exhibit of the museum so we had enough room to
assemble the skeleton. The barriers we put up were unfortunately not always
enough to restrict the area, as over the course of the day at least one pair of
children accidentally got in before we had to kindly tell them to leave. After
restricting the area we went out to the parking lot, where fossil-preparator
Ben Pabst (the one with the beautiful white mane after whom Galeamopus
pabsti is named) had arrived with the back of his car loaded with
Victoria’s pelvic girdle (mostly made of real bone, partly 3D-printed). After
helping with loading the massive pelvis onto a wooden lift, we drove the bones
back into the museum, where construction could now begin.
First the pelvis
was pulleyed onto a scaffold and the leg bones were attached.
Then the tail was
assembled. This was probably one of the most fun parts for me, as I was able to
personally help with arranging the vertebrae (though this was admittedly pretty
easy, as the caudals were already labelled with numbers). The spinal column of
Victoria is pretty much complete, as far as I am aware only the very tip of the
tail that you see on the table had to be 3D-printed.
Then came the rest
of the spine and the ribs, where I could also help out a bit. Interestingly,
one of Victoria’s ribs close to the hindlegs (the second-to-last one at the
back in the upper image) had a weirdly flattened bit. The corresponding rib on
the other side is not known and no other rib had that feature, so one has to
wonder if this was perhaps an injury the animal had acquired in life.
Between the
assembly of the ribcage and the shoulder-girdle, Dennis, his other assistant
David, Esben Horn and Me had to make a quick detour and pay another dinosaur a
visit, Barbara (SMA 0010) the Nanosaurus agilis. As mentioned, Barbara
will also eventually come to our museum and we have some pretty big plans for
her. Not only will her original fossil be beautifully exhibited in a
Lenin-esque glass-sarcophagus, but she will also be accompanied by a full-size
life-reconstruction. This is why Esben Horn, founder of the model-manufacturer
10TONS was there with us in the first place, as we had to show him the fossil
and our plans with it. The clear specifications for the model are still being
decided on, but in general we want her to lean down and look at her own fossil
because it makes for a nice aesthetic. We also want her integument to be
some form of dino-fuzz. The latter is justified, as, among a few other reasons
(I wrote a 10-page document for Dennis where I weighed our options), in most
current models Nanosaurus is actually surprisingly close to Kulindadromeus
zabaikalicus on the family tree. In order to make potential 3D-scans of the
dinosaur we also quickly borrowed a smaller skeletal model of it from the fossil
plant exhibit and tried to photograph it in the parking lot. The school classes
who were at the museum that day seemed obviously quite surprised, as it looked
like Dennis was stealing the specimen.
After that we went
back to Victoria. Now came the shoulder-girdle and the front-limbs. Here you
can see me laying hands on Victoria’s thicc
thighs.
Lastly Ben laid
out the backplates and discussed the arrangement of the them (these were
copies of the original bones or else they would have been too heavy for the
mounting). An interesting thing he pointed out was that one of the tail-vertebrae
was badly squished and the plate that was likely associated with that vertebra
was also noticeably malformed. While both things could be attributed to
compaction during fossilisation, one again wonders if this could have been an
injury or an illness in life.
I unfortunately
could not stay long enough to see the mounting of the head and neck, but I at
least got to photograph a replica of Victoria’s skull (the actual skull will
remain in the Sauriermuseum’s Howe-Quarry-exhibit for now). If you want to see
a lot more pictures from that day, I made a long collection of images and videos on my Intstagram. In the end, it really was a great time. It was a lot of
fun and I got to meet and see many interesting people. I definitely hope I
can give you more posts like these in the future.
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