Dinosaurs of China in Nottingham: part 2 - Feathered Flyers

While the reconstructed skeletons of big scaly beasts dominate the main downstairs area of Dinosaurs of China, the real treasures are upstairs, where far more delicate, intricately preserved and altogether fluffy animals await. While some of our scientist readers will have seen these in person before, DoC is a unique opportunity for us mere laypeople to get up close to feathered beauties from China. And yes, many of them are originals, including Stripy Longtail here!

Notice the fish, bottom left.

This specimen, referred to Sinosauropteryx, represents an animal preserved in absolutely stunning detail; near-as-damnit complete, articulated and with soft tissue and integumentary outlines all over the place. Before this, the only remotely comparable specimen that I'd seen up close was the Berlin Archaeopteryx, which is revered enough to have a whole (small) room to itself. Dinosaurs of China is host to a number of original specimens like this, each one worth the price of entry alone as far as I'm concerned.

As I mentioned previously, the exhibition is intended to take visitors on a journey from Ground Shakers (the 'classic' dinosaurs) to Feathered Flyers. After walking through the museum's regular taxidermy bird gallery - now host to an iffy Oviraptor skeleton and another, much cooler non-avian dinosaur that I'll get to later - one must ascend a suitably grand staircase to enter the Realm of the Birdosaurs. When compared with the main hall, it's a fairly unassuming space, but the alarmingly large Gigantoraptor mount at its centre more than makes up for any lack of architectural grandeur.

It's impressive and startling, in the way that only an absurdly overblown Cretaceous turkey-saur brandishing an alarming set of claws could be; but it's 'just' a cast, of course. Not to worry, though - if it's a real oviraptorosaur* that you're after, DoC is happy to oblige.

It may be missing a head, but the Caudipteryx on show at the exhibition is extremely impressive all the same. Note the feathers and possible gastroliths, but also the extraordinary fidelity of the preservation. The arms look like they could've been torn from Jack Horner's genetically modified roast chicken. I was continually astonished by the claws; on both the original specimens and the better casts, they were inevitably much longer and tapered to a much finer point than I expected. Couple that with a keratinous sheath, and there's a good chance that many artists are understating the claws on their paravian dinosaurs.

Caudipteryx is lovely and all, but the real star of the show must surely be the Microraptor gui holotype, a breathtakingly complete specimen preserved in endlessly fascinating detail. Rearing sauropod spectaculars are fine, but nothing at DoC captures the imagination quite like this.

Again, the delicate, intricate details in this specimen are absolutely incredible. The skull has suffered somewhat from being smooshed, but the rest of the body is laid out like a skeletal diagram, or that daft dromaeosaur skeleton that's being dusted off at the beginning of Jurassic Park. It seems almost too good to be true. Natee and I could have stood there and pored over this one for hours, but we had to let other people have a peek!

In case you were wondering, DoC does indeed tackle the "Archaeoraptor" hoax, and presents it alongside a real specimen of Yanornis (above). It's wonderful to be able to compare this toothed bird with Microraptor, a contemporary, or at least near-contemporary.

Another notable bird on display is Confuciusornis, an original specimen complete with clawed hands and two very long tail feathers, the likes of which you'd never know where there had you only skeletons to work with. Confuciusornis was toothless but less well adapted for flight than Yanornis, which just goes to show that the evolution of birds was a bloody confusing mess (although that is how evolution tends to work; we humans just want it to be a neat and linear march of progress as we're often engineers at heart).

The original specimens are complimented by a number of truly excellent casts, sometimes virtually indistinguishable from the originals. I'd never seen the remains of Sinornithosaurus (above) up close before - the specimen used for this cast is quite jumbled, but in such cases there's always nearby signage to help you out. (In fact, the signage throughout this section continues to be excellent, especially as it always explains which specimens are casts, and which are originals.) I was especially struck by how Velociraptor-like its skull was, at least superficially, and once again the wicked-looking, pin-sharp claws on its hands.

Additional casts include Dilong (above - always great to see an early tyrannosauroid) and weirdo Epidexipteryx (below). Again, it's a superb cast, and while I haven't seen the original, it's hard to imagine that much detail has been lost.

Out on the balcony, overlooking the Mamenchisaurus (and being overlooked by its tiny towering head), visitors will find an amazing Protopteryx cast. Again, those hand claws are endlessly fascinating to me for some reason. Perhaps it's because it's so rare for one to imagine Cretaceous non-avian dinosaurs at this scale. There's also an inevitable tendency for pop culture renditions of small, feathered dinosaurs to become cutesy and non-threatening, when in reality their rapacious tendencies probably made them the tiny terrors of whatever they could get into their needling clutches.

Oh yes, and for all you Mark Wittons and David Unwins out there, there's the cast of a pterosaur, Wukongopterus. Positioned alongside so many paravian dinosaurs, the skeletal differences are thrown into stark relief, which is a Good Thing; of course, the signage still makes the point very clear.

Neaby is a 3D print of Yi qi, which is a cool thing for the exhibition to have, but suffers from being a rather poor quality reproduction - it's conspicuously lacking in detail and false-looking when compared with the far superior casts elsewhere in the exhibition. Still, it's more than made up for by...

...an incredible 3D printed Mei long! It's the aforementioned 'much cooler non-avian dinosaur' in the bird gallery. Along with the slightly duff oviraptorosaur, the intention is to draw parallels between the behaviours of modern birds and their extinct theropod cousins. There's something quite magical about Mei; a frozen moment of theropod behaviour, preserved in three dimensions. This 3D print is a remarkable achievement. It's worth mentioning that the regular (and by now, quite historic) bird dioramas at Wollaton Hall are also excellent, and have recently undergone a little refurbishment. Even if you miss DoC, there's a wealth of natural history material here, and more to come in the near future.

And finally...here's the Mamenchisaurus' dopey face, as captured by Natee. If you have the chance, please do go and check out Dinosaurs of China - it's inexpensive, host to some amazing specimens that are rarely seen outside of China, and represents an enormous effort by people truly enthusiastic about educating the people (and even their parents) on the wonders of palaeontology in the 21st Century.

Byeeee! Photo by Natee.

*Your phylogeny may vary

Dinosaurs of China in Nottingham: part 1 - Ground Shakers

Have you ever wandered among the imposing corridors and grand halls of an historical stately home and thought about how much they could be improved by the addition of dinosaur skeletons? Then boy, do I have an exhibition for you. But more importantly, it's a showcase of numerous impressive skeletal mounts of Chinese dinosaurs, many never seen before outside their native country, along with an array of breathtaking original specimens. Dinosaurs of China is a huge coup for an obscure museum, a wonderful achievement of international co-operation, and a unique opportunity for British dinosaur enthusiasts - and Natee and I were fortunate enough to tour with curator Adam Smith.

Adam works as a curator at the natural history museum based in Wollaton Hall, a 16th Century manor house a short distance from Nottingham city centre. He's also a palaeontologist (specialising in marine reptiles) and set up the Dinosaur Toy Blog and corresponding forum, which is how I ended up meeting him originally. He's justifiably proud of this exhibition, having had a hand in pretty much every aspect of it, and was keen to explain all the careful thought that went into what we were seeing.

Rare photo of Adam in casual garb

Subtitled 'Ground Shakers to Feathered Flyers', the idea is to lead the visitor from a 'traditional' (read: expected) display of large, impressive skeletal mounts in spectacular surroundings, on to a more low-key exhibition of some of the most beautiful (real) fossil feathered dinosaurs found in China in the last few decades. Visitors enter via a side entrance, and must walk up a fairly nondescript corridor and staircase into the main hall, where the space instantly opens out and they are greeted by a stunning rearing Mamenchisaurus, in addition to a beautiful wall-filling artwork by Zhao Chuang. It's an effective way of immediately grabbing a visitor's attention. You won't see a Mamenchisaurus posed in front of a fanned-out array of guns anywhere else...

The large skeletal mounts were provided by the IVPP, and the casts do vary somewhat in quality. One of the best is a lovely Sinraptor, posed almost as if cowering or skulking around the rearing sauropod. Although space can be tight in Wollaton Hall (it wasn't designed to be a museum, after all), it's still possible to view the skeletons from multiple angles and take photos largely unimpeded by barriers. Adam mentioned this as being quite deliberate. The accompanying signage strikes a perfect compromise between relaying the necessary information, and not overwhelming the more casual visitor; I overheard a number of actual parents relaying information that they'd read on the signs quite accurately to their children, which is more than I can say of many museums I've visited.

While one might expect a heavy emphasis on 'birds as dinosaurs' in the floof-o-saurs section, the link is made throughout the exhibition. Consequently, a Guanlong mount is presented next to an ostrich from the museum's collections. The skull on the Guanlong is notably peculiar, with the orbit and temporal fenestra seemingly being combined; it may be a result of the original being crushed and distorted, but it's a little strange that it wasn't 'fixed' for a mount like this. Still, it's a treat to finally see a mount of this tyrannosauroid, which is seldom seen outside of China.

Behind Guanlong, and utterly dwarfed by its much larger, later relative, stands Lufengosaurus. The forelimbs are rather strangely mounted, but this is otherwise a pleasingly modern, horizontal, but bipedal take on the animal. A nearby display explains the history of its discovery and classification; the palaeontologist who described it, Yang Zhongjian, was tutored by Friedrich von Huene in a lovely early example of palaeontological East meets West. His contemporary reconstruction of the animal, much like Von Huene's of Plateosaurus, is strikingly forward-thinking and has held up incredibly well.

There's a Protoceratops in the main hall too because, hey, you've got to have Protoceratops. I've seen plenty of excellent Protoceratops casts, including those used in Dinosaurs: Monster Families, so it's very strange that this one is so poor. In particular, the head looks like a sub-par sculpted copy, and is really lacking in detail. I think the wee fellow slapped on too much foundation.

But that hardly matters when, in a case immediately adjacent, you have an original juvenile Pinacosaurus fossil, with a beautifully preserved skull. Perhaps more important even than being a gorgeous genuine specimen, it's quite simply utterly adorable. Bless its petrified spiky chops. As the specimen is still embedded in the matrix, it's surrounded by 'excavation tools' in typical natural history musem stylee. They're from Adam's cupboard, by the way.

Coming up next: a trip upstairs to see the feathered flyers! (And gliders. And freakishly big, long-armed, pin-headed monstrosities.)

American Museum of Natural History, part 3: no birds, please, we're bird-hips

And so, finally, to the hall of Ornithischian dinosaurs (as a reminder, Baron et al. 2017 isn't to be mentioned). In spite of the tendency of theropods and sauropods to hog the limelight, the AMNH's Other Dinosaur Hall almost manages to outshine the lizard-hipped-themed gallery - almost. There's no beating Rexy's charisma, but his eternal adversary certainly comes close.

Once upon a time, the AMNH's Triceratops stood immediately next to Rexy, the pair frozen on the cusp of a final showdown. While that must have been an inspiring sight, I'm quite glad that the three-horned one now sits among its relatives; it provides better evolutionary context, and besides, these animals are quite spectacular enough on their own. From the front, the lack of epoccipitals is striking, but then this frill has largely been reconstructed (so put your 'Toroceratops' hypotheses away for now). It's possible to walk all around the mount and take it in from every angle, which is a useful reminder of how wide the hips are.

To the left and in front of the Triceratops in the above photo is a very cool wall-mounted Centrosaurus, which sadly I didn't manage to get a good photo of - on a sunny day, the reflections can make taking decent photos of the glass-covered specimens very difficult. However, I did manage to get some decent shots of a fantastic nearby Styracosaurus. This historical specimen is quite heavily reconstructed in places, as I understand, but wonderful to see all the same. Once again, I must say what a treat it was to see all these specimens discovered by Barnum Brown, the stuff of Dinosaurs! magazine comic strip legend.

A nearby case of centrosaurine skulls proved difficult to photograph (more reflections), but I did have a little luck with a row of Protoceratops skulls. These really illustrate the huge amount of variation that can appear as the result of ontogeny within a single species. Furthermore, the preservation of tiny, delicate bones in some cases (such as in the second picture below) is really stunning. Note the bone projecting into the orbit.

In my first post, I mentioned how special it was to finally see the Velociraptor holotype skull. It was equally satisfying to finally see AMNH 1696, the near-complete Pachycephalosaurus skull (below) that appears in so many museums around the world in cast form. I'm not the sort of person to complain about casts being on show in museums - the original specimens need to be looked after and protected from The Public. However, I must admit that seeing the originals, the very fossilised remains of long-dead animals uncovered by the intrepid fossil hunters I read about as a child, is - dare I say it - magical. Like going to the Efteling on a quiet day.

Marginocephalians aside, the gallery is of course stuffed with superb hadrosaurs. The twin Trachedmontanatosaurotitans, while ostensibly quite modest when compared with Rexy or Bronto, are still world-famous and actually rather imposing in person. They're so often depicted as hapless tyrannosaur fodder that it's easy to forget that these were big animals, and I'm sure they were able to fend off many attackers with their sheer heft alone. The poses are dated now, but the idea of having one standing bipedally and one quadrupedally was ingenious.

 Mounted nearby is the still-astonishing Barnum Brown Corythosaurus. Unfortunately, it's another one that's very difficult to photograph, but I appreciate the closeness to which one can get to this skeleton, even if it's behind glass. And yes, you can see the skin impressions, too.

And if you like a bit of dinosaur skin (steady now...) there's a cast of the "Trachodon" mummy nearby. Not the original, but then, it is a very precious specimen.

If one walks in from the Triceratops end, the thyreophorans sit behind the ceratopsians and opposite the hadrosaurs (andotherornithopods). The centrepiece among them is a mount of Stegosaurus, an impressive beastie with a droopy tail but a raised head. There's also a very few mounted bones from what appears to be a juvenile, with the rest of its frame filled out by a wire silhouette. It's a neat idea that is replicated elsewhere with a big wireframe Paraceratherium (with a mounted skull).

There's no full mount of an ankylosaur, but what's on offer is still pretty impressive. There are bits of Ankylosaurus, including its huge tail club, alongside a pavement of osteoderms from another animal (ashamedly, I can't remember which. Help!). The third photograph below features Euplocephalus' hips, which, needless to say, were very, very wide and flat, enough to remind me of my many boring train journeys in Holland. It's worth mentioning, again, the very unfussy presentation which serves to accentuate the specimens, while still providing plenty of information for those who are interested; these really are superbly designed displays, for the most part.

And finally...it's Edmontonia, it of the spiny shoulders and head like an angry battle sheep. I found this partial mount especially fascinating for some reason; I suppose its incompleteness lends it that extra air of authenticity. It may be of relatively modest proportions when compared with some of the other animals in the gallery, but suffice it to say that it looks like it could hold its own in a fight. Those spikes look mean.

I must say that it was a real pleasure to finally visit the AMNH, a museum I'd been dying to see for years, absolutely stuffed with amazing historical specimens including the most iconic Rexy of all (take a hike, Sue). There's a lot more besides dinosaurs, obviously - the breathtaking taxidermy displays, perhaps the best I've ever seen, are only the start. But that will have to wait for another day. For now I'd just like to thank our friend Nancy for showing Nicole and I around and for hosting us while we were in New York. As you can see, we had a wonderful time.