The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[Leyster]

Wow, great and inspiring display! I didn't know Jinyunpelta was so small in life, I assumed it to be more or less 1/25

[Duna]

Your display is fantastic. I love it. Congrats for the job!

[Halichoeres]

Thanks, everyone!

It truly is amazing how diverse your collection is, from species, to companies (big or small), and from time.

Every year I think is the year that the number of companies shrinks, but it just keeps growing.

Wow, great and inspiring display! I didn't know Jinyunpelta was so small in life, I assumed it to be more or less 1/25

Based on the skull, it's about 1:17, so it's a little bit small for the shelf it's on, but a little large for any other. But yes, quite a small ankylosaur!

Forgot one! And it's one of my favorite shelves because it's heavily vegetated:


±1:20 landlubbers.

PS, I updated and upgraded the reference list on the first page. Ornithodirans are in the OP, and everything else (including Cenozoic fauna) is in Reply #3. That ought to keep me from exceeding the character limit until the Life game pieces get here.

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

Beautiful! So much Sealife (As expected )

I don't know why, but my Eyes got stuck a couple of times at the Helicoprion. Nice shots. I wish i had Cabinets. Congrats on the new Cabinet

They are so expensive and i only would want older cabinets for me, that fit the rest of my Furniture. So maybe in the Future.

[JimoAi]

Jurassic bilaterians!


Belemnitida indet.
Scale: depends, but maybe about 1:3 for many common taxa
Released: 2020
Upper Triassic-Upper Cretaceous
I'm glad to see CollectA producing large-format invertebrates, even if this year's lineup proves to be a one-time thing. I'm perhaps slightly miffed that they didn't designate a taxon, although I suppose there are few belemnites whose external appearance is known, most being preserved merely as tapered cylinders of calcium carbonate. This is more accurate and detailed than the Bullyland version, and so replaces it.


Nipponites falls for the old "Cephalopod Group Hug!" trick.


FaunaCasts Muraenosaurus
Scale: 1:25-1:30
Sculptor: Malcolm Mlodoch
Released: 2009
Middle Jurassic
I wasn't really looking for this, but I got it as bycatch with another purchase and I liked it enough to keep it. There are so many plesiosaurs, and so few that have been made into toys. I came to the hobby too late to see the days when Mlodoch was active on the forum and collaboratively (at the best of times) designing figures for the community. He's in my neck of the woods too; perhaps I'd have been lucky enough to meet him. I'm glad to have found this copy, as they don't come up for sale often. I might be wrong, but I think the forelimbs are a little bit too long on this figure, or the hindlimbs a bit too short. But I'm definitely no expert in sauropterygians.


With the coeval Opthalmosaurus. It scales better with this Opthalmosaurus than with the one from the FaunaCasts line.


Wing Crown Anchisaurus
Scale: 1:6
Lower Jurassic
Veering from the sacred to the profane, here's a big ugly soft plastic toy. It very clearly has "Anchisaurus" printed on the bottom, although it seems to be designed more after Brachiosaurus. It's still less terrible than the smaller, even more cartoony Gosnell figure I had before (I think Gosnell and Wing Crown are the same company, or at a minimum they have some extremely similar molds). Anchisaurus is known from excellent remains, can someone make a decent figure please?


An anachronistic theropod for scale.


W Dragon Giraffatitan
Scale: 1:35 for a very large specimen
Released: 2020
Upper Jurassic
This is an impressive, imposing piece. It replaces my Papo "Brachiosaurus," which is reasonably faithful to the JP design but departs from reality in a variety of ways. This corrects some of those errors: the anatomy of the hand, the claws of the hind foot, the neck posture, and the position of the nares. The torso gives the distinct impression of having skin on it. It can be depressed slightly, and a few millimeters beneath you feel a solid, heavy core. I'm not sure how this was accomplished or how well it will age, but the effect is a little like the "Real Feel" action figures, only more lifelike. I'm quite happy with this figure. Alas, it will probably be my last purchase from W Dragon, as they recently acquired the JP/JW license, which is very unlikely to result in any products that interest me. I wish that license had gone to Nanmu instead, whom I'd already written off as doing nothing worthwhile.


Next to EoFauna's Atlasaurus, itself no pipsqueak.

Is it okay if I use the collectA belemnite as the 4 to 5 metre individual?

[Bokisaurus]

Impressive collection and you even have a total of how many figures you have!
Nice to see the display where they live.

I have lost count of how many are in my collection and it seems to keep on growing despite trying to downsize the last few years 🤣

[Halichoeres]

Beautiful! So much Sealife (As expected )

I don't know why, but my Eyes got stuck a couple of times at the Helicoprion. Nice shots. I wish i had Cabinets. Congrats on the new Cabinet

They are so expensive and i only would want older cabinets for me, that fit the rest of my Furniture. So maybe in the Future.

Thank you! I would love to pick up some older cabinets too. I might try to visit some antique shops this summer once I'm vaccinated.

@JimoAi you mean Megateuthis? Length estimates are kind of speculative, but as far as I know there's nothing about this figure that makes it a bad match for it. So sure, you could have it represent Megateuthis, at maybe about 1:25 scale.

Impressive collection and you even have a total of how many figures you have!
Nice to see the display where they live.

I have lost count of how many are in my collection and it seems to keep on growing despite trying to downsize the last few years 🤣

Thank you! I definitely don't count, but I do maintain a spreadsheet with release date, scale information, etc. Once in a while I export it to R to do a cluster analysis on the scales, to keep my shelves as visually coherent as possible.

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

Thank you! I would love to pick up some older cabinets too. I might try to visit some antique shops this summer once I'm vaccinated.

Oh, a good reminder. Germany fails completely right now with the vaccinations and all that, but i am in the second row now. We'll see
But seeing the Giraffatitan... At first i never looked at the Figure, because i was just thinking of it as a big, expensive JP Model. But then i read Suspys Review... oh wow. It is so elegant and majestic. It is quite expensive, but i would love to own that very W-Dragon Sculpture. So gracile.

[JimoAi]

Beautiful! So much Sealife (As expected )

I don't know why, but my Eyes got stuck a couple of times at the Helicoprion. Nice shots. I wish i had Cabinets. Congrats on the new Cabinet

They are so expensive and i only would want older cabinets for me, that fit the rest of my Furniture. So maybe in the Future.

Thank you! I would love to pick up some older cabinets too. I might try to visit some antique shops this summer once I'm vaccinated.

@JimoAi you mean Megateuthis? Length estimates are kind of speculative, but as far as I know there's nothing about this figure that makes it a bad match for it. So sure, you could have it represent Megateuthis, at maybe about 1:25 scale.

Impressive collection and you even have a total of how many figures you have!
Nice to see the display where they live.

I have lost count of how many are in my collection and it seems to keep on growing despite trying to downsize the last few years 🤣

Thank you! I definitely don't count, but I do maintain a spreadsheet with release date, scale information, etc. Once in a while I export it to R to do a cluster analysis on the scales, to keep my shelves as visually coherent as possible.

Not too bad as I have things like the 1:21 scale Papo hammerhead and the collectA mosasaurus

[Halichoeres]

But seeing the Giraffatitan... At first i never looked at the Figure, because i was just thinking of it as a big, expensive JP Model. But then i read Suspys Review... oh wow. It is so elegant and majestic. It is quite expensive, but i would love to own that very W-Dragon Sculpture. So gracile.

I'm very happy with it, I must say! A pity that W-Dragon is pivoting to licensed merchandise.

Eukaryotes of the Jurassic!


Papo Chilesaurus
Scale: 1:17 or so
Sculptor: Seo Jung-woon, presumably. It looks like his style.
Released: 2020
Upper Jurassic of Gondwana
A surprisingly daring choice for Papo that I felt compelled to reward. This figure of a very strange dinosaur is very far from perfect, but kudos to Papo for giving it a shot. While people who know a lot more than I do argue over whether it's a theropod or an ornithischian, I'll be here turning this figure over in my hand and wondering what each of those affinities means for the evolution of its unique combination of traits.


With some other Jurassic critters at near the same scale, although they are from different continents and stratigraphic intervals. But here they are, ready to go on Maury and see the results of their DNA test to finally settle the question: ornithischian or theropod? (Or, if you really want to rile up dinosaur systematists, maybe ur-ornithoscelidan.)


CollectA Megalosaurus
Scale: 1:35 - 1:40
Sculptor: Matthias Geiger
Released: 2021
Middle Jurassic of Laurasia
Considering its importance in the early history of dinosaur paleontology, it's a little surprising that there aren't more figures of Megalosaurus. I'm happy to have a figure that actually looks like it could be Megalosaurus rather than just a generic outdated theropod like the Toyway one, which this replaces.


Collecta Mamenchisaurus cf. hochuanensis
Scale: 1:35 - 1:40 or so, but see below
Sculptor: Matthias Geiger
Released: 2021
Middle Jurassic of Laurasia
I'm basing the species on the following copy from CollectA's web site: "Uniquely the CollectA model incorporates a tail club suggested by unusual and fused vertebrae found at the tip of the tail of one fossil specimen." The specimen in question was referred to M. hochuanensis, although it might well pertain to a different species, and either or both species might properly belong to a different genus altogether. Mamenchisaurus is a taxonomic disaster! Based on the more complete holotype of M. hochuanensis, this is about 1:35. You'll get different numbers for other species. Provisionally replaces my PNSO Mamenchisaurus, although this is one of those cases where the supplanted figure goes into a closet in case I change my mind or I learn that they unambiguously represent distinct taxa, rather than going straight to my trade thread. (I'm certainly willing to be corrected, too, if someone has a better idea on the ID.)


With its PNSO counterpart. Amazing that I'm choosing between these two when not so long ago I was choosing between the old Safari DoC and Invicta versions. They're very similar by total length, but the posture of the CollectA version makes it much more stable, and takes up less shelf space.


And a selection of Jurassic taxa at a comparable scale. The small PNSO Huayangosaurus would go well here too, but I'm not sure where mine is stowed. At first I was a little bummed that CollectA announced this at 1:100 scale, but they've long undersold the scales on their figures. To be 1:100 it would have to represent an animal of ludicrous length.


Schmalkalder Ginkgo
Scale: 1:100 - 1:200 based on the size/maturity implied by its growth habit
Upper Triassic-Recent
You could be forgiven for thinking I find the Cenozoic boring. I don't! For my PhD, I studied the effect of Neogene Earth history on Quaternary fish taxa. It's more that if I don't set a rule or two for myself, my shelves would overwhelmed with extant taxa, because if I started assembling a Pleistocene shelf, it would feel incomplete without all the living species that were already around in the Pleistocene (which is to say, nearly everything now alive). Now, this is deeply silly, but I never bought the CollectA Ginkgo biloba precisely because it represents G. biloba, a strictly Cenozoic species, and therefore outside the purview established by my collecting rules. If it had been any Mesozoic species (there are many!), I'd have a few on my shelf. This one from German tin figure maker Schmalkalder doesn't specify the species, so I can let it stand in for any of the various Jurassic members of the genus. There will be a lot more Schmalkalder figures in the next couple of updates. They've posed some interesting identification challenges.


With another tiny tree.


This shelf is the new home of the Ginkgo, but not of the Mamenchisaurus, despite CollectA's scale claims. (If you can't see the tree, it's being attacked by the Kaiyodo Barosaurus.)

Also: I definitely thought this tracking status for my box of new CollectA loot was an April Fool's joke, but I'm delighted that it wasn't:

[Loon]

Yes, you got it! The Mamenchisaurus is so good, figure do the year material honestly.

Also, you've made that Chilesaurus grow on me a bit.

[ceratopsian]

Your informative comments are always so illuminating.  I had no idea that Mamenchisaurus was bedevilled by taxonomic problems.  I'll be following this up to learn more!

[Halichoeres]

Yes, you got it! The Mamenchisaurus is so good, figure do the year material honestly.

Also, you've made that Chilesaurus grow on me a bit.

Yup! I agree, the Mamenchisaurus is really good (to my inexpert eye). The Chilesaurus is worth getting for a taxon completist like me, but it might not rise to the standards of your collection.

Your informative comments are always so illuminating.  I had no idea that Mamenchisaurus was bedevilled by taxonomic problems.  I'll be following this up to learn more!

Thanks! I'm always glad to know that someone finds those tidbits useful.

[SBell]

Yes, you got it! The Mamenchisaurus is so good, figure do the year material honestly.

Also, you've made that Chilesaurus grow on me a bit.

Yup! I agree, the Mamenchisaurus is really good (to my inexpert eye). The Chilesaurus is worth getting for a taxon completist like me, but it might not rise to the standards of your collection.

That's the same reason I bought it!

[Halichoeres]

A brief stopover in the Triassic, courtesy of Schmalkalder, one of several German manufacturers of flat pewter figures. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems to me that figural representations of Triassic organisms are disproportionately concentrated among German companies. I'm really savoring these, because the major toy makers have announced zero (0) figures this year from my favorite part of the Mesozoic (barring a couple of repaints from Mattel), so this will be the last glimpse into the Triassic for a while. I don't have any idea when the Schmalkalder flats were originally released, but judging from the design of some of the set's dinosaurs, I think it must have been a generation or more, maybe around the time that Brumm and Berliner were making theirs for the first time. They're nominally in 30mm scale (~1:61, a once-common scale for miniature wargaming), but the scales are really all over the place.


cf. Pterophyllum
Scale: 1:40 ± 10
Upper Triassic to Upper Cretaceous
Pterophyllum (not to be confused with the cichlid so popular in aquaria) is a form genus of leaves from bennettitaleans, a group of plants resembling cycads but probably more closely related to angiosperms. These leaves are fairly common fossils in Germany's Triassic deposits, so I thought it was a pretty good ID for a figure identified by Schmalkalder as only "Benetidee" but specifically allotted to the Ladinian-Rhaetian Keuper unit in their product list.


Chirotherium
Scale: 1:40 - 1:45
Middle to Upper Triassic
Depending on when these were released, this might have been the first fleshed-out figure of an ichnogenus. Chirotherium is the name given to trackways of pseudosuchians showing five manual digits and probably five manual claws. They span several stages of the Triassic, but some of them might belong to the Anisian-Ladinian Ticinosuchus. As a side note, I think that last year's Schleich Postosuchus works a lot better as a Ticinosuchus than as a Postosuchus, and I'd have bought it if they'd given it that name.


If you're relaxed about what specific genera you're talking about, this is a hypothetical Triassic food chain. The Chirotherium is a little crude, which is also true of the other tetrapods in the set.


Pleuromeia
Scale: 1:15 - 1:35 depending on species
Lower to Middle Triassic
Pleuromeia was a modest-sized (less than waist-high) lycophyte that formed large monocultures on young soils, suggesting it was probably fast-growing. I kind of wish this set had come with more than just one, as they would probably rarely have been found singly. But absolutely a welcome bit of variety for my plant-sparse shelves.


A traversodont gets ready to take a bite out of its stem.


Ceratites nodosus
Scale: 1:8 - 1:12
This is the first ammonite genus in my collection that's specifically from the Triassic (most are Cretaceous). It's also easily the smallest in my collection. I get why it's not a good idea for kids' toys, but I'd love more plastic animals this tiny to round out my display shelves.


Probably an unwise midnight snack for a needle-toothed predator like a nothosaur.

I chose these comparison photos for the period/scale match, but if anybody wants a comparison photo with a more familiar figure, let me know and I can try to help out. I think some of these plants might be my next painting projects, because I'm (perhaps naively) assuming they'll be a bit more forgiving as subjects than animal figures are.

[SBell]

Where did that nothosaur come from? It's very cool.

[BlueKrono]

Where did that nothosaur come from? It's very cool.

It's one of those stretchy Italian ones. Sbabam, or possibly Diramix.

[SBell]

Where did that nothosaur come from? It's very cool.

It's one of those stretchy Italian ones. Sbabam, or possibly Diramix.

Now I see it. It looked like plastic at first.

[Halichoeres]

Where did that nothosaur come from? It's very cool.

It's one of those stretchy Italian ones. Sbabam, or possibly Diramix.

Now I see it. It looked like plastic at first.

@SBell as @BlueKrono guessed, it's one of those Italian rubber guys. You know how on dating apps sometimes people have only super high-contrast photos to make themselves look better? I think the dramatic lighting did that for the DeAgostini Ceresiosaurus. It isn't actually a terrible mold, but the material is trash of course. They use the same mold for their Lariosaurus and Askeptosaurus(!), but bizarrely, not for their Nothosaurus, which looks more like a mosasaur.

[SBell]

Where did that nothosaur come from? It's very cool.

It's one of those stretchy Italian ones. Sbabam, or possibly Diramix.

Now I see it. It looked like plastic at first.

@SBell as @BlueKrono guessed, it's one of those Italian rubber guys. You know how on dating apps sometimes people have only super high-contrast photos to make themselves look better? I think the dramatic lighting did that for the DeAgostini Ceresiosaurus. It isn't actually a terrible mold, but the material is trash of course. They use the same mold for their Lariosaurus and Askeptosaurus(!), but bizarrely, not for their Nothosaurus, which looks more like a mosasaur.

Those companies are so strange. Imagine if they lined up with the artwork?

That link also reminded me of the Microhaplolepis pair that you found

Are you in need of a home for one of them still?