The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[Duna]

Wow Duna, you sure were lucky finding the Carnegie Diplodocus. Congrats! Is it me or are Carnegies even harder to come across than Battats nowadays? In my case, while I don't collect vintage figures, I would like to get the Battat Pachyrhinosaurus at some point as the representative of such an iconic line and as a tribute to Dan LoRusso. From time to time I scroll through ebay searching for Battats, and I would say I find them more often than not, whereas I feel like the newest Carnegie figures are harder to find, or are sold at higher prices (compared to Battat on ebay). But as I said I'm not really into vintage collecting so my view is probably wrong.

Yes, you are right, the latest Carnegies are getting very expensive (I've recently seen several of them going over 300€). Battats are more common but still there are the holy grails as always.

[Halichoeres]

Thanks, everyone!

I was thinking of buying the Skorpiovenator, but I settled on getting the Dsungaripterus the next time I'm in Target or Walmart, due to it being more pleasing to the accuracy side of my collection than the Skorpiovenator is.

I might do the same thing if I didn't already have the excellent 2006 Kaiyodo Dsungaripterus, but it's quite a bit harder to find than the Mattel version. The Mattel Dsungaripterus is also cheaper than the Skorpiovenator, so a win on that front too.

@Concavenator I saw that tease about the DinoZoo Skorpiovenator, but I generally steer clear of resin figures of dinosaurs, because they're such a slippery slope. I've been down a slippery slope before: buying Yowies for their unparalleled diversity made it easier for me to countenance JP/JW toys, silly miniatures like DinoFroz or DinoWaurs, and other unrealistic toys. But that's a relatively cheap slope to slip down. The slippery slope of resin dinosaur figures/models/statues is very very expensive. So I just try not to go down that slope (there are a handful of exceptions in my collection, but they're essentially grandfathered in). If DinoZoo eventually makes PVC or other plasticized dinosaurs I'll likely buy some. And of course the minute DinoZoo makes a prehistoric fish I don't already own, they'll get my money, because fish models are rare enough that I always make exceptions for them.

@Gwangi and @Duna yeah, without doubt the Carnegie Diplodocus is a beautiful work of art and a piece of toy history, so if I were a more art-focused collector I would have a hard time parting with it. I think I don't experience nostalgia the same way many people on the forum do, maybe because I don't have especially fond feelings about my youth. I know how important Invicta and Carnegie were in moving the dinosaur market in the direction it's gone, but I'm curating a plastic natural history museum, rather than an art museum or a history museum.

@Gothmog the Baryonyx Mattel really has done a decent job sampling abelisaurs, and I think with this year's releases they will have made more than any other company: the usual Carnotaurus, plus Majungasaurus, Rajasaurus, Skorpiovenator, Quilmesaurus, and Rugops (although the latter looks more like a tumor-stricken tyrannosaur than an abelisaur). Planeta DeAgostini made 3, PNSO has made 4 (but all but Carnotaurus only as minis), CollectA has made 4 (but all but Carnotaurus in their earlier, cruder days), and there's a surprising variety of Majungasaurus figures (https://dinotoycollector.com/Browse/Browse.php?Art=Majungasaurus). Overall, on DTC there are 95 abelisaurids, 80 of which are Carnotaurus. The ones that aren't Carnotaurus are mostly pretty bad.

Wow Duna, you sure were lucky finding the Carnegie Diplodocus. Congrats! Is it me or are Carnegies even harder to come across than Battats nowadays? In my case, while I don't collect vintage figures, I would like to get the Battat Pachyrhinosaurus at some point as the representative of such an iconic line and as a tribute to Dan LoRusso. From time to time I scroll through ebay searching for Battats, and I would say I find them more often than not, whereas I feel like the newest Carnegie figures are harder to find, or are sold at higher prices (compared to Battat on ebay). But as I said I'm not really into vintage collecting so my view is probably wrong.

Yes, you are right, the latest Carnegies are getting very expensive (I've recently seen several of them going over 300€). Battats are more common but still there are the holy grails as always.

Observing the rapid increase in price of latter Carnegie pieces has been rather bracing! I feel I got into the hobby at just the right time in that respect: I started right as the news of the Carnegie line's demise was becoming public, so I had time to order them all direct from Safari before they were gone.

[Halichoeres]

Some Mesozoic osteichthyans:


GR Toys / Haolonggood Quetzalcoatlus
Scale: 1:25, but it depends on what you measure
Released: 2022
Maastrichtian of North America
This one was a letdown. I gave it a shot because GR Toys and their collaborators have shown some early promise, but this wasn't a very well-executed figure. The proportions are pretty wonky compared to what we saw in the dinosaurs from the same companies. And the jaw just hangs open, defeating the purpose of the articulation. I think I'll stick with the Colorata version I already have.


Silly. Between this and what we've seen of the upcoming theropods, I have to say GR Toys/Haolonggood have lost some of their luster.


Also annoying: mine was shipped sans box, which I don't recall requesting, and this toe broke off. Another toe lost a tiny piece of its tip. Oh well, the blank copy that came with it might be good painting practice.


CollectA Pteranodon sternbergi (Geosternbergia)
Scale: 1:17 for a large male
Sculptor: Matthias Geiger
Released: 2022
Santonian - Campanian of North America
I don't have a strong opinion on the name; "genus" and "species" don't even mean the same thing for vertebrate fossils that they do for living animals, despite what people like to pretend. But I think this is a really wonderful figure, one of CollectA's best pterosaurs so far. I know that some prefer the giant almost life-size ones, but this size is preferable to me: it has shelf presence, but also is to scale with some of my other figures.


Like the TS Toys Tropeognathus


Tamiya indeterminate Semionotiformes
Scale: 1:35?
Released: 1993
These fish are part of the Tamiya "Triceratops Diorama Set" model kit. It's a nice kit, outdated of course but well made.


To nobody's surprise, I didn't buy it for the dinosaurs, but based on this somewhat optimistic box art. The illustrations are almost certainly Semionotiformes of some kind. I can't be sure which, although the deeply forked tail is unusual in the group. This order of fishes was globally distributed through most of the Mesozoic, including Hell Creek, so they coexisted with Triceratops. However, to the best of my knowledge, all Hell Creek semionotiform remains are fragmentary and not referred to any particular genus. So I guess I'll leave them as indet.


They're the right scale to be eaten by Thalassomedon, although the diorama implies they're freshwater, so I guess I'm just waiting for someone to make a Melvius figure to eat them (I'll just go ahead and start holding my breath).


Keldan International Diamantinasaurus (Australian Dinosaur Hatching Eggs)
Scale: 1:70 or thereabouts
Cenomanian or Turonian of Australia
This is another one I won't keep, but I bought it out of sheer curiosity. Maybe by sharing here I'll save someone else the trouble. This is one of those toys you're supposed to soak in water overnight and the egg it's in will dissolve, freeing the toy within. I find the residue from those eggs gross, so I just used a hammer. That leaves some adhesive residue on the tip of the hilariously stumpy tail, but I can live with that. Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, this is the only plastic toy of Diamantinasaurus, although the re-release of Banjo gives me renewed hope that there will be one from AAoD in the future.


In the meantime, I suppose it could stand in as a juvenile for Banjo to eat.


CollectA Smok
Scale: 1:18 - 1:20
Sculptor: Matthias Geiger
Released: 2022
Upper Triassic
CollectA went all in on a loricatan affinity for Smok. Its hind foot has four weight-bearing digits, in contrast to the three-toed trackways found at the same site. It's possible that those tracks were made by some other animal, of course. Interestingly, it also has five claws on the front foot, like Postosuchus likely had. Frustratingly, like the vast majority of Triassic archosaurs, Smok does not have a known manus, but it is certainly possible for a stem-croc of this age to have five clawed fingers. If Smok is a theropod, then of course it would be much less likely, but this is obviously not a theropod-esque reconstruction.


Nicely to scale with the Lisowicia from a couple of years ago.

[Concavenator]

Ah, the GR Toys Quetzalcoatlus... aesthetically I think it's very nice, but as an actual representation of the creature... yep, it's not that good. It's a pity, I was excited when I saw it, but after reading Fembrogon's review for the blog, it's got to be a pass for me. I could overlook one or few inaccuracies, depending on how bad they are, but this time the proportions are so off that I don't consider this to be trivial. I'm interested in a good (standing, the flying pose is a drag to display) Quetzalcoatlus or Hatzegopteryx, so I'll keep waiting. When GR Toys released their Dicraeosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus I thought they were really top notch, but now they seem to be hit and miss. Still, they showed an early WIP of their upcoming Acrocanthosaurus and it appears to be promising, hopefully they'll get back to their golden days.

The CollectA Geosternbergia on the other hand is great, at the top of my pterosaur wishlist along with possibly SpinoDude's upcoming Tupandactylus. I also much prefer this size, all their other pterosaurs have been a pass for me because of their massive size. This one's still large, but not humongous either. If they release more pterosaurs of a similar size, at least I will consider them.

Hopefully after its return, the AAOD Australovenator sells so much that you will soon be replacing that Diamantinasaurus!

When it comes to the Smok, shouldn't it be bipedal, like Postosuchus?

[JimoAi]

Welp I guess I'm not the only one with a damaged Quetzalcoatlus. I'm sticking to my safari ltd version which will be Q. lawsoni.

[Bread]

Yeah, unfortunate about the GR Toys Quetzalcoatlus, both the quality control with its toes and the proportions being off. I've seen youtube reviews with the same issue with the toe.

I have this model on the way and toe issue is somewhat worrying, but I'll take what I can get. This model will probably be all we can get at the moment, besides Safari's.

@Halichoeres do you plan on posing the Quetz along with PNSO's giraffe?

[Strepsodus]

Do you have any modern or Cenozoic fish/other animals?

[Halichoeres]

Thanks, everyone!

Ah, the GR Toys Quetzalcoatlus... aesthetically I think it's very nice, but as an actual representation of the creature... yep, it's not that good. It's a pity, I was excited when I saw it, but after reading Fembrogon's review for the blog, it's got to be a pass for me. I could overlook one or few inaccuracies, depending on how bad they are, but this time the proportions are so off that I don't consider this to be trivial. I'm interested in a good (standing, the flying pose is a drag to display) Quetzalcoatlus or Hatzegopteryx, so I'll keep waiting. When GR Toys released their Dicraeosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus I thought they were really top notch, but now they seem to be hit and miss. Still, they showed an early WIP of their upcoming Acrocanthosaurus and it appears to be promising, hopefully they'll get back to their golden days.

The CollectA Geosternbergia on the other hand is great, at the top of my pterosaur wishlist along with possibly SpinoDude's upcoming Tupandactylus. I also much prefer this size, all their other pterosaurs have been a pass for me because of their massive size. This one's still large, but not humongous either. If they release more pterosaurs of a similar size, at least I will consider them.

Hopefully after its return, the AAOD Australovenator sells so much that you will soon be replacing that Diamantinasaurus!

When it comes to the Smok, shouldn't it be bipedal, like Postosuchus?

The Acrocanthosaurus is so embryonic that I can't pass judgment yet, it could be as bad as their Tyrannosaurus or as good as their Carcharodontosaurus. Hoping for the latter.

As for Smok, yes, it's much likelier that it would be bipedal. Its hand isn't complete, but the known elements of the arm are pretty short compared to the known elements of the hind leg. CollectA has occasional problems with bipedal archosaurs and my guess is they chose to make it look more like Prestosuchus just to avoid dealing with a base or warping problems. The result is a reconstruction that is pretty hard to defend, but so little gets made from the Triassic that I'm not going to complain too much. This year is one of the most imbalanced (in favor of the Cretaceous) that I've ever seen, when all companies' releases are taken as a whole.

Welp I guess I'm not the only one with a damaged Quetzalcoatlus. I'm sticking to my safari ltd version which will be Q. lawsoni.

Yes, the Safari would be my choice too if I didn't already have the rather rare Colorata version.

Yeah, unfortunate about the GR Toys Quetzalcoatlus, both the quality control with its toes and the proportions being off. I've seen youtube reviews with the same issue with the toe.

I have this model on the way and toe issue is somewhat worrying, but I'll take what I can get. This model will probably be all we can get at the moment, besides Safari's.

@Halichoeres do you plan on posing the Quetz along with PNSO's giraffe?

I actually don't think I have a single giraffe figure. I don't really collect extant animals--if they did they would take over my house.

Do you have any modern or Cenozoic fish/other animals?

Expanding on my reply above, I do have a small handful of fish. I have Favorite's Ancient Fish series, and Colorata's "Fossil" fishes boxed set. Both are  all modern species, but generally remnants of clades that were more diverse in the past. I also have a few characoids because I studied them for my dissertation, but apart from the red-bellied piranha, characoids are very rare as toys. I find the Cenozoic fascinating, but if I were to collect Cenozoic extinct fauna, given my interest in ecology, it would be hard for me to resist including extant animals, basically all of which also existed in prehistory. So I just cut my collection off at the K-Pg.

[CarnotaurusKing]

Pretty nice acquisitions (especially the Geosternbergia, Zhuchengtyrannus and Diplodocus), though (as usual) some... eccentric choices, if I'm being charitable. All said, it's admirable how committed you are to fulfilling the title of your collection thread.

[Halichoeres]

Pretty nice acquisitions (especially the Geosternbergia, Zhuchengtyrannus and Diplodocus), though (as usual) some... eccentric choices, if I'm being charitable. All said, it's admirable how committed you are to fulfilling the title of your collection thread.

Ha ha, thanks! It would be dishonest to say this is the actual reason, but the rationalization is that by showcasing the sometimes terrible renditions of unusual taxa, I ever-so-slightly increase the chance that someone else will make good versions some day.

Sarcopterygians of the Devonian! All of these are by Oumcraft (Oammararak Suchimonsri) for the Life: Evolution of Life on Earth game, with many of the designs inspired by the Palaeopedia Tumblr blog.


Ventastega
Scale: 1:20
Late Devonian
Our great-greatⁿ-uncle from Latvia was probably aquatic and spent little if any time on land, but maybe it could have hauled out now and again. Maybe it would have been a good way to dry out ectoparasites. Odd that it's so smooth--this animal almost certainly had scales.


Griphognathus
Scale: 1:15 - 1:20
Late Devonian
Griphognathus was an ancient lungfish with a strange hooked jaw tip like a beak. I drew one a couple years back, completely unaware that I might get a figure one day:



These animals would probably never have met, although Ventastega and Griphognathus were both marine, so...maybe?


Osteolepis
Scale: 1:8
Middle Devonian
Another distant relation, this is the first figure I'm aware of from the stem-tetrapod Megalichthyiformes. Ward Scientific made a carved wood teaching model of Osteolepis sometime last century, but I missed the only auction I've ever seen for one. With this, I can stop looking.


With the much larger Mandageria.


Laccognathus
Scale: 1:55
Middle Devonian
A porolepid (part of the vast lungfish stem group) that appears to have been able to crawl on land between bodies of water, despite being a rather large fish (up to 2 meters).


I'll bet antiarchs didn't like Laccognathus much.


Holopterygius
Scale: 1:2
Middle - Late Devonian
The famous "eel-a-canth," an elongated sarcopterygian with a persistent notochord and virtually no vertebral centra. This figure is foreshortened, it was even more eely in life.


Pteraspis was from much earlier in the Devonian, but these are to scale. Holopterygius was tiny!


Miguashaia
Scale: 1:15 - 1:20
Late Devonian
One of the most stemward coelacanths, found in Canada. It has the basic coelacanth fin complement, although the tittle tufted tail isn't in evidence yet. You might have noticed a lot of this shade of blue in today's update. Considering the unit price for these, and the sheer variety of ancient life these game pieces represent, I'm not inclined to nitpick. But I wouldn't have minded a slightly more varied palette.


This encounter is theoretically plausible, since Miguashaia was estuarine and similar to Cladoselache in age.

[Leyster]

Very interesting additions, but I think you uploaded the wrong image for last, it shows Holopterygius and Kaiyodo Pteraspis

[Halichoeres]

Very interesting additions, but I think you uploaded the wrong image for last, it shows Holopterygius and Kaiyodo Pteraspis

Yep, copied the wrong image URL. Fixed now, thank you!

[Bokisaurus]

Wow, those fishes are nice and very small! Hard to imagine sculpting all those details for such a small size!

[Duna]

The detail of the sculpt of those little ones is amazing. And the paint makes them look incredible.

[Blackdanter]

Awesome thread Halichoeres. I can see that this is going to occupy hours of my life! ;O)

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

Lovely figures as usual, those game of life fish sure look tiny. I hope they are all safe.
I wish they had made Smok bipedal but alas.

[Halichoeres]

Wow, those fishes are nice and very small! Hard to imagine sculpting all those details for such a small size!

I imagine it would be pretty hard if done by hand, but a bit more manageable digitally. That said, the fact that the print artifacts are hardly noticeable is real testament to Oammararak's workmanship.

The detail of the sculpt of those little ones is amazing. And the paint makes them look incredible.

Yes, she did a wonderful job!

Awesome thread Halichoeres. I can see that this is going to occupy hours of my life! ;O)

Thank you! I do hope you'll find it useful and interesting!

Lovely figures as usual, those game of life fish sure look tiny. I hope they are all safe.
I wish they had made Smok bipedal but alas.

A few did suffer paint damage because I think they were still slightly wet when packed. But it's mostly pretty minor.

And now, chelicerates of the Silurian! All of these are from the Life: Evolution of Life on Earth game by Oumcraft (Oammararak).


Offacolus
Scale: 3 - 4× life size
Silurian: Wenlock
Named after an ancient Saxon king, this tiny, superficially shrimp-like creature is equally closely related to arachnids and to horseshoe crabs, and forms a clade with them to the exclusion of pycnogonids (sea spiders). To my eye, the shape suggests more of the horseshoe crab than of the spider, but of course it was still aquatic after all.


With the crustacean Dithyrocaris from a few million years later.


Proscorpius
Scale: slightly smaller than 1:1
Silurian: Wenlock - Pridolí
From upstate New York, a wonderful place for Silurian and Devonian fossils--this genus is known from dozens of specimens. I sometimes wish I'd gotten to know the fossiliferous areas better in the short time I lived there. Reading up on fossil scorpions, I learned that more than 100 species are known, but 80 of those are from the Paleozoic, one of those weird quirks of the fossil record that reminds us to be humble about what we don't know. Maybe there was something about the Paleozoic that just made them especially prone to fossilization, or maybe people working in the Mesozoic are so distracted by vertebrates that they overlook things as lowly as arachnids.


Dolichophonus
Scale: 1:1
Silurian: Llandovery - Wenlock
Unlike Proscorpius, Dolichophonus is only known from a single specimen found near Edinburgh. It's the earliest known scorpion; although a 2020 paper claimed Parioscorpio was an earlier scorpion, further analysis suggested it was some more basal arthropod, and probably aquatic. Dolichophonus was found in marine sediments, but alongside a bunch of plant debris, suggesting it washed in from land. Like the Palaeopedia Tumblr, Oammararak reconstructs it with a very long prosoma. I haven't been able to find any images of the actual fossil to confirm that that's correct, although the name ("lengthy killer") suggests it might be right. It certainly makes for a distinctive figure!


Protolindenia lived 270 million years after these scorpions.


Palaeophonus
Scale: 1:3
Silurian: Wenlock - Ludlow
The Wikipedia article on this animal gives its temporal range as Silurian - Carboniferous, which would be remarkable, but that seems to be based on a data-entry error on the Paleobiology Database. A query for this genus on PaleoBioDB returns one Carboniferous record, but the associated citation is a paper on fossils from the Silurian-Devonian boundary. So I think it's safe to say it's an animal only known for certain from the Silurian. Generally speaking, the Wikipedia page for the genus is a mess: links to citations that don't say what the article does, spam links, and so forth. Maybe I should become a Wikipedia editor.


I obviously don't have much in the way of Paleozoic terrestrial fauna at this scale, so the Play Visions Triadobatrachus will have to do as a size reference.


Thanks to Oumcraft, I now have a respectable collection of ancient scorpions. I had exactly zero before!

[Concavenator]

It's interesting those arthropods are made at such a big scale, it's not very often that one gets to see near (or) life-sized figures of prehistoric animals in the market (granted, there's also a bias to dinosaurs and bigger animals in general).
They should scale fairly well with some CollectA pterosaurs like the Caviramus and the Dimorphodon.

BTW, @Halichoeres I wanted to ask you about the bigger PNSO Atopodentatus. You reviewed it for the blog and said it was very well proportioned. However, I saw this skeletal L @Leyster shared, and it looks like its proportions are way off:

(skeletal by Jaime Headden)

What do you think?

[Flaffy]

Thanks for continuously showcasing the LIFE minis @Halichoeres !

Big fan of how O @Oammararak painted the Offacolus. And didn't realise how small the tiny crustacean was in real life! Glad to have this figure in my collection, as with 90% of species in the line, I highly doubt any other company will bother making.

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

More lovely figures,it's nice to read abou them as well.
I think a lot of those sort of animals will not have up to date wiki really, not many people interested in that.