Mounting the Psittacosaur Fossil (2005 Archive)
Mounting the Psittacosaurus Fossil
Mt. Blanco Museum has been contracted to mount the skeleton for a collector in the Dallas area. Mr. Stan Lutz, a welder and fossil collector from Washington State is working at the museum and will be doing the difficult job of welding the wire armature to hold the real bones.
The dinosaur is a Psittacosaurus (sit-tak-o-saurus) and was the size of a small collie dog. The most unusual part of the animal, which is being sent later, is it’s head. It is more like a parrot than a dinosaur.
There are untold numbers of these animals buried in the Gobi desert. Most of them are whole and were buried alive.These bones are petrified and are of a glassy gray color similar to bones of the vast numbers of pigs and horses buried in the volcanic ash of South Dakota and Nebraska.
Taylor vacuuming strange, hard sawdust from the box sent from China with the skeleton of small dinosaur.
Stan Lutz prepares to glue the small dinosaur bones back together damaged in shipment.
Real bones laid out on drawing of a Psittacosaurus enlarged to fit this specimen.
We enlarged a drawing of the dinosaur by xeroxing it up to fit the length of the right femur,
which was only 5&1/2 inches long.
Article and photos copyright Mt. Blanco, originally published 2005. Re-posted August 2015
*Mt. Blanco Archives: Because of the many changes since Mt. Blanco opened in 1998, we are re-posting many of the old updates, articles, etc. that were originally on our website. Some of the information may be out of date, but each of our archived articles are an important part of Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum’s history.
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