Embracing the Inner Fish
10:50 am
In this case, mine appears to be a Triassic coelacanth:
This was the scene at The Day Job a couple of weeks back, as we unpacked a sculpture for the newly-opened Triassic exhibit. I happened to be wearing the right shirt for the occasion, and my boss David snapped this picture. The piece I’m holding is a fantastic restoration of the freshwater coelacanth, Chinlea sorenseni, about to snap up a school of Synorichthyes. The fish were sculpted by the talented Gary Staab of Staab Studios for the exhibit.
And here’s how the sculpture looks on display, beneath a cast of an fossil Chinlea skull and some Triassic coelacanth bits from New Mexico. The panel is sandwiched between a petrified lungfish burrow and the reconstructed leaves of the enigmatic plant Sanmiguelia. A reflection from the fishtank of Kirby, a living African lungfish, can be seen in the window:
Excellent phytosaur!
I’m going to have to get myself down to NM one of these days (sooner than I had perhaps planned, perhaps).
Great work – can we see some developmental sketches of the crocodilians?
Just wandered over here from Laelaps.
I have the same shirt from Mr. Troll, and in June I wore it to the Field Museum in Chicago, where I managed to get video of myself doing pushups alongside Tiktaalik.
Most people wouldn’t understand, but you will: This was the high point of my vacation – doing pushups with a cast of a fossilized fish.