Re: Where to buy fossil skull replicas - Any suggestions?

["Larry Febo" <larryf@capital.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Danvarner@aol.com <Danvarner@aol.com>
To: dinosaur@usc.edu <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Date: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 12:39 PM
Subject: Re: Where to buy fossil skull replicas - Any suggestions?


>In a message dated 12/4/01 7:43:11 AM Pacific Standard Time,
>rpavley@hotmail.com writes:
>
>
><< My wife is looking to buy me a replica fossil skull for the holidays.
>Does
>anyone have a favorite place (store/web site) that has a selection in the
>$100 - $200 range (I do not have space for a 72" Triceratops let alone the
>budget)? >>
>
>
>       This brought back memories. Back in Minneapolis in the 50's of the
>last century there was a local Saturday morning kid's TV program called
>"Hobby Showcase". A feature of the show had a line of kids showing off
their
>model-making projects. The winner would get a supply of the powerful "10
>Minute Glue". One Saturday I'm watching and some kid shows up with a
>Triceratops skeleton about a foot long. Of course, my six-year-old brains
>fell out and I became almost comatose. I had my mom call Woodcraft Hobby
>store (who sponsored the show) to find out how I could get one. It turned
out
>the damn kid was one of those creative types and had actually carved the
>thing out of wood. There was no kit. Fast-forward a year or two and now I
>have the beautiful Tyrannosaurus skeleton made by Ideal Toys. It's a
beauty.
>On the side panel of the box it came in are pictures of models that will
>appear in stores soon. Triceratops is coming! Year after year I plague the
>hobby shops. Brontosaurus comes out followed by Neanderthal man both as a
>skeleton and a fleshed-out restoration. Stegosaurus, too. But never, ever
>Triceratops. They lied to me!
>       There could be a happy ending to this lengthy Christmas story. Ralph
>Chapman and the folks at the Smithsonian could go into the model business
and
>mass produce an affordable version of their digital Triceratops--my
Christmas
>wish. I held the little version of the skull at SVP and it was quite the
>miracle. Here's a shot of a somewhat larger scale: DV
>       http://muweb.millersville.edu/~dinosaur/g28.jpg
>       and
>       http://muweb.millersville.edu/~dinosaur/g43.jpg
>

Just a thought, (that occurred to me whilst pondering a Christmas gift for a
talented youngster.I was, at the time in one of those "Nature-Science"
stores in a mall that featured those wooden dinosaur models),..... Why don`t
they make scale models that are fairly accurate in the depiction of Dinosaur
skeletons??? After all, they can be fairly precise when it comes to Cars,
Battleships or planes. Why can`t they mold hollow plastic bones that can be
strung together with wires, and posed in  lifelike positions? Those wooden
models seem appropriate for pre-teens perhaps, but wouldn`t there be a
market for more precise models? They certainly would be more educational.

(By the way, I wound up purchasing an F-16 model fighter jet , at Wallmart,
for this particular youngster)!