Life size dinosaurs

[Bezzerkerr]

I would've loved to pick up the OFFICIAL STAN WINSTON T-REX bust...what a shame, I was only a couple of hundred grand SHORT

in all seriousness, it's a nice option, but it's gonna be tough to sneak this one in

 

[Scar]

HL, do you work with Studio OXMOX? If so, and if you can offer a freaks discount, I'd consider the dio. I've had my eye on that for years.

 

[Scar]

Also, if I may say, one thing that I would change with the T.rex in the dio is to give the T.rex heterodont dentition instead of homodont dentition. What I mean by this is that all of the teeth in the dio seem rather small and uniform. Adult T.rex teeth should be extremely large and thick, with the most massive of these being located along the sides of the jaw and more diminutive teeth on the front. Just a thought. The SS Tyrannosaur pieced executed this quite well.

 

[Jeremy K9]

I've been oggling these pieces for a long time and plan to own their closed mouth Deinonychus soon. They are also coming out with a lifesize Veloiraptor soon. That should be a more affordable piece for those who can't drop a ton of cash for the bigger pieces.

 

[Bezzerkerr]

i was very impressed when i visited their website...these guys don't mess around.

 

[hardstyle lover]

same here jeremy i want to buy a closed mouth deinonychus around christmas , but the only problem i have is SPACE, i cant unpack the damn thing or display it.

so i think i'm going for the diorama first.

and sorry about that dan , i forgot to post the website adress

 

[hardstyle lover]

HL, do you work with Studio OXMOX? If so, and if you can offer a freaks discount, I'd consider the dio. I've had my eye on that for years.

Hi scar , no i don't! but i have 3 big gaming store's in the family and they buy there store statue's with studio oxmox.

the only thing i can get is maybe one discount for myself, because they order only once a year or something.
so i 'm going to try and get a discount on the dio.

 

[Scar]

I see. It's an elaborate piece, so it seems the logical move. The Sideshow Tyrannosaurs are much more accurate, though. Unfortunately I'd probably be nitpicking at the dio for quite some time. It can be a pain sometimes to be so meticulous with critiquing collectibles.

 

[dansdinosaurs]

It seems pretty obvious that the Oxmox pieces are heavily influenced by the Jurassic Park designs. Although even the JP Rex seems to have more accurate dentition in that image... Hm.

 

[hardstyle lover]

on that i have to agree, the teeth on the JP rex look good

 

[Scar]

It seems pretty obvious that the Oxmox pieces are heavily influenced by the Jurassic Park designs. Although even the JP Rex seems to have more accurate dentition in that image... Hm.

My thought exactly. However distinct and particular to the JP films the SWS design is, a great deal of it is painstakingly rendered for accuracy, albeit uniquely stylized. If look at that picture of the JP rex, you can see the great variety in dentition, whereas the Oxmox design seems far too uniform.

 

[dansdinosaurs]

Well, Trcic pushed pretty hard for accuracy on the JP Rex, but they would only let him take it so far. I think he said the final version was only about 60% accurate.

 

[Scar]

Yep, SW wanted a fair bit of accuracy, but he also wanted it to be readily recognizable as "the JP T.rex". I'd put the accuracy around 80% in terms of physical appearance, 65% in terms of behavior due to the visual acuity and speed.

 

[hardstyle lover]

what do you mean visual acuity & speed?

 

[Scar]

T.rex wasn't nearly as fast in an endured sprint as it was depicted in the film. Capable of brief bursts of speed, but it wouldn't have run a protracted length of time and distance like that in pursuit of prey at 32 mph.

T.rex having visual acuity based on movement is flat out wrong in every way, shape, and form (though this was amended in the TLW novel and arguably movie as well). T.rex had vision 13 times more acute than human vision; eagles possess vision 3.6 times more acute than human vision, to put it in perspective. They also possessed a binocular overlap range of 55 degrees which is greater than extant hawks. In short, T.rex had the best vision of any known terrestrial animal in the history of the planet. It's been well-documented that it had a remarkable sense of smell second to only the modern turkey vulture, but its vision was frequently overlooked until very recently.

 

[dansdinosaurs]

Speed is difficult to determine, but the visual acuity was definitely altered for dramatic effect. The explanation sometimes provided in JP-canon is that the animals are mutated with reptilian DNA, so they can have any number of wacky things going on. Including venom and frills.

 

[Bezzerkerr]

Dan,

I heard the T-Rex and other large dinosaurs had feathers, not scales like modern reptilians.

Is this accurate? You ever heard anything like this?

 

[Scar]

Speed is difficult to determine, but the visual acuity was definitely altered for dramatic effect. The explanation sometimes provided in JP-canon is that the animals are mutated with reptilian DNA, so they can have any number of wacky things going on. Including venom and frills.

Speed we can estimate based on just anatomy and physics. The proportion of the femur to the tibia and fibula allow us to construct excellent models as to how a T.rex could move and at what speed. If it reached 30 miles per hour, it would have been in what's deemed a pouncing assault, meaning that initial burst of speed would have been essential in attaining prey, and that doing so would be virtually impossible after the initial attack due to the energy expended. The legs of T.rex are constructed in such a way that they would have contained a glut of white skeletal muscle, meaning that they would succumb to fatigue quickly when exerted over time. At a rate of 40 miles per hour in a sprint, the entire body from the abdomen anteriorly would have been accelerating at far too great a speed to come to a complete halt without capsizing violently into the ground. The body of T.rex simply wasn't built for speeds like that, let alone over time; if it were to move at such a pace, the slightest trip could kill it, splintering and driving ribs into the thoracic cavity and quite possibly stopping the heart from the sheer force of the impact. In a run like that, even if T.rex would have possessed the appropriate proportion of red muscle to engage in a prolonged run, it would have had to slow down gradually like a landing jumbo jet, slowly coming to a complete stop which is quite comical to picture.

As to the visual acuity, that was dismissed in the books as an attribute of many species of frogs which, when combined with T.rex DNA gave that unexpected result. Thanks for bringing that up, though, Dan. Takes me back to all the nice little details that Crichton put into the texts. It's a true tragedy that we'll never again be graced with another work from that brilliant mind.

The Dilophosaurus frill and venom were creative liberty on the part of Crichton and SW, and don't have anything to do with reptile DNA, since the gaps in the dino DNA were supplemented with amphibian DNA, not reptile DNA.

 

[Scar]

I heard the T-Rex and other large dinosaurs had feathers, not scales like modern reptilians.

Is this accurate? You ever heard anything like this?

Entirely inaccurate. There was a discussion about this some time back. Since I don't feel like typing everything out again, I'm just going to use the quote.

Based on T.rex skin impressions alone we can conclude that adults were not entirely covered with feathers, and also factoring in the immense size of the animal, heat dispersal becomes an issue and feathers would have only served to insulate and trap heat in a multi-ton endotherm, making the existence of feathers far outside the realm of possibility in T.rex. This is also why elephants, hippos, and rhinos look the way they do, devoid of coats of fur.

T.rex young are commonly depicted with down fluff, and rightly so being that, while small, T.rex young had a much higher ratio of surface area to cumulative volume than adult organisms, and wouldn't have retained heat as well. Young Tyrannosaurs shedding down as they grow is easily applicable to both birds and reptiles today which molt their feathers and scales respectively as they mature.

Saw that Brusatte book myself, and depicting the tyrannosaurids with ornamental proto-feathers isn't entirely implausible. Losing down fluff and having proto-feathers emerge sporadically in some areas is possible, but the book has them around the head, and T.rex would have lost a lot of heat cranially; again, the insulation in that region, while it looks neat in the book, isn't likely.

 

[themadhatter]

Want one, need one, gotta have one!!!!!!!