This ‘exploded’ cranium is a Tyrannosaurus on display in Toyko. It’s a really nice idea as I suspect quite a few people (understandably) tend to think of the head as just a couple of bones – the skull and jaw, when of course there are a great many components, and often of course these are rather more complicated than they appear from the outside with all the grooves and interlinking parts that fit them together. So this provides a nice exposition of that issue with the parts laid out in a such a way that it’s quite clearly a rex (and there is a mounted one just a few feet away) there’s obviously rather more complexity to it.
Incidentally the odd angle of this photo is because this is lain out on the floor with a clear walkway over it, so you can actually walk over it as it were (which kids seem to love), but scratches on this make a ‘straight down’ photo impossible.
Is that a big vertebra just coming into frame on the right?
Yep, the Argentinosaurus dorsal they have I think. I never got a great photo of it, but it’s hanging around in a couple of other photos in older posts I have of the museum. I can track one of them down if you want it Mike.
Heh. Despite Dave’s claims to the contrary, I suspect that he was really photographing the dorsal and only later found that he had accidentally gotten the exploded skull in the frame. Then he decided to crop the photo to highlight what might have occurred if Argentinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus hadn’t have been separated in time and space.
Yeah, I bet that’s exactly what happened.
What do you think I am, some kind of *sauropod* worker! :-O Gah!
I once had a chance to play with casts of “Stan”, that was fun and confusing at the same time.
I wish I got to play with a confusing cast of any dinosaur.