Big Al Two: Paleontology Cut of Original Allosaurus Material

Meet Big Al Two! Not ‘2’ or ‘II’ though I have seen such spellings. The official signage at its home museum uses ‘Two’ and that is what I will use going forward.

I have to confess, I was surprised at the amount of what appears to be restoration on it. I suspect it was added when a mold was made of it. It was found in 1996, pre-3D days, and thus old school molds were likely made.

The challenge becomes identifying what of this specimen is actual bone versus later reconstruction for display. It matters as cladists will score features, especially from photos, videos and 3D surface scans, and will have even less of an idea about what is original than when standing in front of it, thus inevitably introducing errors to their research.

This is a problem for essentially every original dinosaur bone on display. How much “show prep” is done, where a specimen is made pretty for “the show,” which is invariably secondary to research, versus left as original as possible, which rarely looks “pretty” to the museum visitor walking buy.

Who are fossils for? A researcher like myself wants no restoration. I want it raw: remove matrix and call it a day. Ideally with a side of CT :-). Display a cast alongside the original material. For me, the art is in the science, form follows function, and the function is maximal extraction of accurate morphology.

Contrast that with folks who need to drive revenue and find repeat customers. The conventional wisdom is a polished-looking product “sells,” though I’d wager side-by-side would play better. Yet space is always a premium. And there is the matter of if a place spent beaucoup bucks for a specimen, it is going to be on display in as slick a way as possible.

Happily, @sauriermuseumaathal will remove the case, share their digital files, and make it about as nice of a research experience as one can ask for.

Not all museums are so research friendly, even those with high-powered research histories and current research teams. It depends on politics as much as anything.

Mounting original skeletons buries the actual research-ability of a specimen in plain sight.

#BigAlTwo #Allosaurus #JurassicDinosaurs #FossilCrates #Paleontology #DinosaurSkull #NaturalHistory #FossilDisplay #PrehistoricLife

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