Carnotaurus skin (and more pathetic whining)

["Ralph Miller III" <gbabcock@best.com>]

Dave:

I feel your pain.

I have been trying -- fruitlessly -- to obtain the March 26 edition of
_Nature_ magazine, the one with the _Scipionyx samniticus_ on the cover. 
It seems that the very bookstores which have been selling this magazine (as
recently as last month!) can no longer find a distributor to sell it to
them!  I'm talking about the Stanford University Bookstore and Borders
Bookstore in Palo Alto, California.  This is supposed to be silicon valley,
and there is no place to buy the scientific journal here!  I give up.

Speaking of _Carnotaurus_, you wouldn't be very "impressed" with any of the
photographs of fossil integument impressions even if you could obtain them.
 For the most part, the lighting and resolution just aren't good at all. 
What is most striking in these photos is that the neck was very wrinkled,
presumably to allow expansion when swallowing large chunks of meat. 
_Dinosaurs All Around_, now available as a paperback for $10, has better
detail and long shots of Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas' full-size
_Carnotaurus_ sculpture than any other single source, and does show one
fossil skin mold with good detail, but photographed obliquely.  The
close-ups of the sculpture are informative, as the textures are based on
clay casts of the actual fossil textures.  This book is a profile of
Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas, paleoartists, written for kids, which takes you
through the process of creating life-size dinosaur sculptures, with
particular emphasis on the _Carnotaurus_ sculpture.  If I were you, I would
seek out this book for information on _Carnotaurus_ as interpreted by
Czerkas & Czerkas.  (Full references for the hardcover edition are in the
recent archives).

If the sculptors Czerkas seem miserly in their dissemination of fossil
information, consider the fact that they devoted 3 1/2 years to sculpting
_Carnotaurus_, and 7 years of their lives to the project if you include the
fossil excavation and research!  (These are the figures Stephen gave at the
sculpture roundtable discussion at Dinofest).  It would be an
understatement to say that they have a personal stake in this subject.  I
don't suppose that there is anything preventing other researchers from
publishing more information on this unusual creature.

The sculpture can be seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural
History,  at the Czerkas' Dinosaur Museum in Monticello, Utah, and at the
natural history museum in Taipei, Taiwan (which includes a whole gallery of
full-size dinosaur sculptures supervised by Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas). 
Planning a vacation?

-- Ralph Miller III     gbabcock@best.com