DinoSkulls

The Indiegogo campaign has come to an end. The perks and goodies have been mailed, and the money transfer has been "initiated." The Paypal donations have already cleared and that is what I purchased the perks, the cases, and paid for the shipping with. There was enough to put in a quick order for a few pieces before they disappeared. The Carnotaurus was discontinued with only 3 left in stock, so I wanted to act quickly. They also offer damaged skulls for a fraction (about 1/3) of the regular price. So, I ordered one of each that they offered. At most it would just be a little gluing. I will highlight the first shipment for the Paleo Porch Mini Mobile Museum:

The package as it was delivered. Well packed, I might add. 

Three boxes=3 skulls

Opening the Carnotaurus first

These are really high quality replicas. 

Scaled down for super-easy transport

They even come with very nice little stands with their names and scale size on it: 

Here is where the fun begins: How badly would these be damaged? They didn't say:

The deinonychus was missing a few (4) teeth, as you can see, and was now a two piece. 

I learned about Duco cement at University taking my Archaeology course. This stuff is fantastic for nearly any type of medium you need to reattach and it works brilliantly on resin. 

 

The jaws, being good little levers were heavier on the end so I had to employ a bit of spacering and rubberbanding. 

The Brachiosaurus was another story. The jaw was separated from the skull, just as the deinonychus was, only it was missing many, many more teeth. Both from the lower jaw:

and the upper: 

This actually let me realize just how good these casts are. Brachiosaur teeth are notably described as "peg-like" or "pencil-like" and these are. All of them. But, they each have the flattened wedge shape on the inside. That made it only a little easier. 

Also, the don't simply get smaller from the front back. They vary in size all along the tooth row. 

There was a lot of checking and double checking. 

Some progress:

Upper was a bit easier, or that is to say went quicker. 

I am still not 100% certain they are all in the correct "sockets" but they look pretty good

Required the same advanced techniques for holding things together . It was here I realized there is a great opportunity to market DragonSkull shoes. They would still look better than crocs

Once all the teeth were in and the jaws were rigged into place

 it was just a matter of the Duco setting up. Total time to get 

 to this point about 2 and a half hours. 

With the jaws being so heavy on the ends and needing pressure in all the right places, I was worried that the Duco might not make it. Shouldn't have worried though, once the bands and spacers were in the right places it was just a matter of time. Now that the Duco has completely cured, the glued joints are stronger than the regular resin pieces. 

 They may have come out of the boxes completely different, a few hours of work and dry time, there isn't that much difference in the finished products. And now you have the first three skulls in the Paleo Porch collections. These three and a few teeth and claws will be at the Pioneer library meeting this Thursday and Friday to potentially negotiate workshops at all 10 libraries in their system during summer vacation. I think it is a fitting sample of what the Paleo Porch Mini Mobile Museum will have to offer 

More to come as I work with retailers to get more bang for buck. I will update as new orders arrive and new workshops get planned, check back here for more updates! 

Let's go out on the porch.

    I grew up in the South. Technically I still live in the South I suppose. There are things that happen down here that are alien to most other folks. Porches are one. I have seen sunrooms in the north, and for good reason, sometimes it is just too cold to be outside up there. Porches, well if there isn't a subset study on Porch Culture there should be. Most of the summer is spent on the porch for the practical reason that it is far too hot inside to live. It looks like I keep creating new blogs instead of creating new posts. This is a holdover from my life with journals and an unadmitted battle with OCD. I have carried journals for as long as I can remember, but I hate having thoughts and topics arranged in places they don't go together. I don't want to talk about fossils or extinct animals over at The Platypus and the Dodo, but it is still an important part of my daily news intake as well as my research. So instead up random incoherentness on one blog I have decided to have random incoherentness on 3. I also write Life's Marginalia to capture all the stuff that doesn't fit anywhere and never had enough to put together a theme.

This is also a joint venture with something I have had the opportunity to do while at the University of Oklahoma--internet radio. The good folks at The Wire have given the Graduate College a two hour slot to discuss everything that is going on with our Graduate Student Life. Currently our slot is from 9:00am to 11:00 am every Thursday. I have the first hour to myself to discuss science news and research. After working solo for a couple of weeks it became apparent that most of the shows ended with a talk about paleontological endeavors. After talking to a few people after the last show, I realized that these were exactly like the stories I heard from my grandparents and their friends while sitting on the porches at their houses. Well, not exactly, there wasn't much talk about fossils, unless a find was announcement in National Geographic.

For the facebook inclined you can like Paleo Porch there too. I upload paleontology related news, photos, threads, or profiles that may be of interest to paleo-nerds. Hopefully this will start to balance out the heavily skewed dinosaur groupie-ism that is so rampant. I will post dino stuff, but mostly focus on the non dinosaurs--pterosaurs, aquatic reptiles, and mammals. I will just hold out until this idea is picked up by PBS or BBC. I would even settle for a kids show. Something needs to give the giant mammals some screen time, after all the Dinosaur Train doesn't stop in the Eocene.

The plan is to overview and summate the goings on each week in the word of paleontology. In addition to the new and noteworthy, I will try to shed some light on historical connections either with the finds, the paleontologists that discovered them, or the localities where they are digging. By updating every week, I will not only be able to keep abreast of all the goings on in the world of paleo, but also give a little more coherence to the show. Please click on The Wire to stream our show as well as others ( I have no idea what some of them are or when, so join at your own risk. There is also streaming video if you just want to see what is going on in the studio. Same link, just click on "video.") I will also upload the media file on facebook hosted through dropbox downloads in case you want to have a sorta amateur podcasts to listen to later.

If anyone has any questions or ideas for topics, leave them here in the comments, or send them to me on facebook. I live with this stuff and take it for granted that many people know more about the backstories of famous fossils than might actually be the case. Welcome aboard, come up and sit a spell. If you are really lucky, you will be able to say that you followed the Paleo Porch blog from the beginning and feel a closer connection as I start a lifetime of hosting the Paleo Porch show. Enjoy They Might Be Giants--they sing about this too.