Nigersaurus in the mist

The best thing about collaborations is that I get to work with amazing colleagues from around the world. The second-best thing about collaborations is that I get to work on badass critters that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to, like sick* diplodocids, tiny saltasaurines, Triassic barely-dinosaurs, and — most recently — my first rebbachisaur (Windholz et al. 2024). I’d seen rebbachisaurs firsthand before, in a traveling exhibit and on the Isle of Wight — plus Xenoposeidon in the NHM collections (in 2005, well before NHMUK PV R2095 became Xeno) and secondhand in plastic — but this was my first time getting to work on one.

*Sick meaning ‘crazy cool‘ and also ‘hideously diseased‘.

I celebrated my advent as a rebbachisaur worker by treating myself to the Jurassic World Wild Roar Nigersaurus, which AFAIK is the only rebbachisaur to have yet been incarnated in toy form. There have been other, and frankly much more accurate, Nigersaurus toys (= figures) produced before — in particular, the duckbill-face on the JW Nigersaurus is less weird and extreme than Nigersaurus’s actual face — but I believe the JW Nigersaurus is the only one that makes noise.

Shortly after I got the JW Nigersaurus, we got a delivery of cold stuff, and I had some dry ice to play with. You know how that story ends.

Sadly, I didn’t think to put the plant in the mist until I had too little dry ice left to make a convincing fog. Until next time…

Reference

Windholz, G.J., Porfiri, J.D., Dos Santos, D., Bellardini, F., and Wedel, M.J. 2024. A well-preserved vertebra provides new insights into rebbachisaurid sauropod caudal anatomical and pneumatic features. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 69(1):39-47. doi: 10.4202/app.01104.2023