The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[Halichoeres]

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

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

Given that these two might be the only ones in existence, I think only a really good trade would persuade me to part with one. I'm listening!
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On another note, I've updated and expanded the reference list on the first page, and I believe it now contains every animal that 1) went extinct before 1500, and 2) has been made as a toy. If anybody knows one that I've missed, do let me know.

[SBell]

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

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

Given that these two might be the only ones in existence, I think only a really good trade would persuade me to part with one. I'm listening!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On another note, I've updated and expanded the reference list on the first page, and I believe it now contains every animal that 1) went extinct before 1500, and 2) has been made as a toy. If anybody knows one that I've missed, do let me know.

It would be hard to guess what you might need that I would have! I think you've lapped me a bit on what you've got that would be unusual! But I'll check your list, who knows.

[Bokisaurus]

Wonderful new additions, those plants are fabulous 
Ah, I see the CollectA have landed on your shelf as well!

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for visiting, everyone!

Now, some Paleozoic deuterostomes, and, again, I'm savoring these because there are almost no Paleozoic figures out this year from major companies--just the Great Old Sea set from Takara Tomy. Schmalkalder has six prehistoric bundles: one Paleozoic, one Mesozoic, and four devoted mostly to early humans hunting mammoths and the like. I restricted myself to the earliest two. And man, are they ever difficult to photograph. It was a real challenge to do justice to their level of detail without huge amounts of glare. A low-angle unidirectional light, with a short exposure, against a black backdrop, was the best I could do.


unidentified crinoid 1 ("Seelilien" per Schmalkalder)
Scale: Anywhere from 1:5 to about 1:25
This crinoid is in the Silurian part of the Paleozoic set. I have no hope of identifying it; according to Sepkoski's compendium, as of 2002 there were more than 1,100 described crinoid genera in the fossil record. Despite the Silurian being very short, there were more than 100 genera. The scale range I give above is for crinoids with stem lengths of 20-100 cm, which are plausible for this era. There were gigantic crinoids with stems dozens of meters long, but to the best of my knowledge they were all Mesozoic.


unidentified crinoid 2 ("Seelilien" + Orthoceras per Schmalkalder)
Scale: 1:5 - 1:15?
This crinoid is in the Devonian part of the Paleozoic set. In contrast to the Silurian, the Devonian was very long (60 million years), with correspondingly more species of pretty much everything. So I have even less hope of trying to identify these crinoids, which, with their squat stalks, look a little like sea anemones. If we interpret these as crinoids, this Schmalkalder set has doubled my echinoderm collection. (The "Life..." game will quadruple it again.)


This scene is impossible because Mandageria was a freshwater fish, but there has never in the half-billion-year history of echinoderms been a freshwater one (probably because of their water vascular system).


unidentified antiarch ("Haiseriten [sic] und Panzerfische" per Schmalkalder)
Scale: 1:40 - 1:50
Middle to Upper Devonian
@ @BlueKrono, here are the fishes you asked about. As near as I can tell, Panzerfische just means placoderms. I know a little bit more about fish than echinoderms, so I have a shot at identifying this one. It's very obviously an antiarch, but it's not a good match for the usual Bothriolepis. It could be Pterichthyodes, but there's not much relief on the thorax, and the eyes are slightly separated, both of which recall Asterolepis more than any other antiarch I'm familiar with. So that's what I'm going with. I think "Haiseriten" is meant to be Haliserites, but I'll have more to say at a later date about how silly that would be.


Oh no.


cf. Coelacanthus ("Raubfische" per Schmalkalder)
Scale: 1:40 - 1:50
Upper Carboniferous - Lower Triassic
Schmalkalder simply calls this "Raubfische," which, as near as I can tell, means simply "predatory fish." But they also assign it to the Zechstein, a very specific range of rocks from the latter half of the Permian. After reviewing the fish fauna of that unit, I think this can only have been modeled after Coelacanthus, the fish that lent its name to every actinistian from the Devonian to the Holocene.


It's too small to prey upon anything that I own, so it will be prey instead. (PS, does anybody else find the word 'predate,' meaning 'to prey upon,' ugly and unnecessary, and also a silly coinage given the existence of 'predate' meaning 'to occur before?')


Palaeoniscum ("Paleoniscus [sic]" per Schmalkalder)
Scale: ± 1:13
Middle to Upper Permian
This tiny fish is the reason I bought the Schmalkalder set in the first place. The placoderm and coelacanth are cool, but I have a few placoderm and coelacanth toys. But Palaeoniscum gives its name to the "palaeoniscoids," a huge paraphyletic array of early actinopterygians that lived in most oceans, rivers and lakes from the Silurian all the way through the Cretaceous. There's never been a toy of any of them, although I've managed to snag a couple of definitely-not-toy models. So I had to get this, and the rest came along for the ride. It's not perfect: the snout is too long, and it should only have a single dorsal fin. But the tail and body are roughly the right shape. The scales, although too large, are also the right shape and work impressionistically for this minute figure.


Diplocaulus to Palaeoniscum: "Better you than me!"

[BlueKrono]

Ooh, I love the coelacanth and placoderms!

[Halichoeres]

A few Cretaceous sarcopterygians:


Dino Hazard Equinoxiodus alcantarensis
Scale: 1:25 - 1:30 (estimate based on the amount of space in the head available for the largest known teeth)
Sculptor: Hugo Cafasso
Released: 2021
Cenomanian of South America
It's almost unheard of to get an extinct lungfish represented as a toy, so this is an exciting figure for me, even if it's not as well-researched as the dinosaur that accompanies it. It combines the body shape of an Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus), the fins of a South American lungfish (Lepidosiren), and the head morphology and coloration of a pirarucu (Arapaima). Of course some speculation is necessary, as Equinoxiodus is known only from toothplates. The visual nod to the modern Brazilian ichthyofauna is cool (and the pirarucu is an air-breather to boot). And modeling it after a South American lungfish, with its spaghetti fins, has a certain biogeographic logic. However, the toothplates suggest that this animal was more closely related to the modern Australian lungfish. Moreover, the threadlike fins of lepidosirenids are oddities relative to the history of lungfishes. It would have been more parsimonious to give it the typical sturdy lobed fins that basically all lungfish body fossils show. This figure also has a very actinopterygian mouth, showing a little cheek-like connection between the jaws, formed in a pirarucu or catfish by the maxilla, which rotates relative to both the premaxilla and the lower jaw. Lungfishes have maxillae fused to the braincase, though, so their mouths don't look like this--they are goofy and "cheek-less," if you like.


Despite its being too obviously injured to display as anything other than quarry, I'm very happy to welcome this into my collection. Fun fact: Dino Hazard is the 93rd company in my collection.


Dino Hazard Irritator challengeri
Scale: 1:10 - 1:15 (for the holotype)
Sculptor: Hugo Cafasso
Released: 2021
Albian of South America
It's at a larger scale than I usually like my dinosaurs, although it could be closer to the stated 1:20 for the Angaturama holotype. The seams are a bit more obtrusive than I'd expected. Still, this is among the finest theropods in my collection. The detail is extremely fine and the balance is exquisite. It balances well off the base, unless I give it the lungfish to mangle, in which case it balances better on the base. I plan to give the lungfish to a more scale-appropriate predator, so its accessory dinosaur will stay off its base for the time being. The plastic in the legs is fairly firm, so maybe it will hold up. Replaces the old CollectA Irritator.


You've heard of cruisin' for a bruisin', now get ready for gnashin' for a smashin'.


CollectA Kamuysaurus japonicus
Scale: 1:50 - 1:55
Sculptor: Matthias Geiger
Released: 2021
Maastrichtian of Eurasia
The promo image didn't do it justice. This is a really excellent hadrosaur. I'm hoping that at some point CollectA turns its attention to some of the committed bipedal ornithopods. Imagine a Dryosaurus this good, for example.


Since Japan was part of the mainland in the Cretaceous, I think Therizinosaurus and Kamuysaurus could easily have coexisted.


EoFauna Triceratops sp.
Scale: 1:35
Sculptor: Shu-yu Hsu, I believe.
Released: 2021
Maastrichtian of North America
I certainly wasn't in the market for a new Triceratops, but I like supporting EoFauna, and I also like figures based on specific specimens (in this case MOR 3027). This is also a good demonstration piece for the minimal case for ornithischian cheeks. Nabavizadeh has been pretty explicit that whereas ornithischians didn't have muscles analogous to a buccinator, that doesn't exclude the possibility of a less substantial, perhaps membranous, "cheek." But there could easily have been almost nothing, as shown here. Anyway, given conflicting and defensible hypotheses of appearance, this fella will coexist with my Safari Ltd version.


The "cryptic" moniker is a curious choice. It's hard to imagine an environment where these pajamas would be good camouflage, the usual meaning of 'crypsis.' Sometimes in fishes like wrasses and salmon the term "cryptic" is applied to "sneaker males," testis-possessing individuals that externally and pheromonally resemble females. They fertilize eggs by passing as females, avoiding detection and aggression from "dominant" males, which are generally larger and more boldly colored. I don't know if this dynamic is what EoFauna had in mind, but it's the first thing I thought of when I saw the "dominant" and "cryptic" labels on the figures.


Imperial Panoplosaurus
Scale: 1:40? but don't take that too seriously, obviously
Released: 1996?
Campanian of North America
Last and certainly least, this Imperial screamer, explicitly labeled Panoplosaurus on the package. Maybe because ankylosaur armor is difficult and intimidating to reconstruct, the proportion of taxa that only have horrendous versions like this (apologies to Imperial fans) is pretty high, maybe higher than for any equivalent dinosaur group. It turns out that the remains for Panoplosaurus are fairly reasonable, so I'd be grateful if some company could make a nicer version of this animal one day.


Here's a photo of the package. Probably everyone here has seen the Imperial Brontosaurus, so I won't make another figure endure the indignity of a comparison shot with this little monster.

[SBell]

Where do you order the Irritator (let's be honest, the lungfish with dinosaur stand) from? I see it on Facebook but didn't look hard enough for a useful link.

[stoneage]

   Isn't  $239.99 rather expensive?

[Leyster]

  Isn't  $239.99 rather expensive?

If you're talking about the Irritator, those are brazilian reaias, not US dollars.

Anyway I was surprised how small Irritator is. The holotipe skull is supposed to be more or less 60 cm, about the same lenght of the Ceratosaurus nasicornis holotype one.

[Shonisaurus]

@Halichoeres My congratulations for your photographs and figures. All fabulous, you are lucky to have that Dino Hazard irritator I hope that some store in Europe, even if it is not from the EU as everythingdinosaur will sell it in the future.

I pass over commenting on the rest of the figures in which many of them I have already expressed in their day.

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for stopping by, friends!

Where do you order the Irritator (let's be honest, the lungfish with dinosaur stand) from? I see it on Facebook but didn't look hard enough for a useful link.

@SBell I used this link. At first it wasn't fully set up for the US, but the customer service was pretty helpful and got it sorted. Not sure where they stand for Canadian orders.

https://www.yvyfigures.com/produtos/irritator-challengeri-dino-hazard-international-sales/?variant=310330851

And yes, definitely a big, fancy display stand for a lungfish.

  Isn't  $239.99 rather expensive?

S @stoneage It certainly would be in dollars! I'd expect a big resin statue for that. But as L @Leyster points out, 240 reales is only about $43 in USD.

Anyway I was surprised how small Irritator is. The holotipe skull is supposed to be more or less 60 cm, about the same lenght of the Ceratosaurus nasicornis holotype one.

Yeah, not an especially large animal, but perhaps not a full-sized one either. Given that I tend to display things by scale, this will be the only spinosaurid on its shelf.

@Shonisaurus thanks, it's possible to order to Europe now, but I suppose you want to avoid customs fees. I don't have any idea whether this will be sold by European retailers.

[SBell]

  Isn't  $239.99 rather expensive?

Having now been to the site... it's still pretty pricey!

Plus, there's the extra fancy premium one? Not sure what that means

[CityRaptor]

Imperial Panoplosaurus
Scale: 1:40? but don't take that too seriously, obviously
Released: 1996?
Campanian of North America
Last and certainly least, this Imperial screamer, explicitly labeled Panoplosaurus on the package. Maybe because ankylosaur armor is difficult and intimidating to reconstruct, the proportion of taxa that only have horrendous versions like this (apologies to Imperial fans) is pretty high, maybe higher than for any equivalent dinosaur group. It turns out that the remains for Panoplosaurus are fairly reasonable, so I'd be grateful if some company could make a nicer version of this animal one day.

And that's onece again reminds me why I don't buy terrible figures just to have the genus present.  Besides, it does not even look like the animal in question. Looks more like a terrible Polacanthus.

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

Great new acquisitions, always a nice read. The Irritator is tempting but I worked out that the deluxe version plus postage to the UK is £80. And there's bound to be customs fees on top, so looking at £100 essentially just for one figure. It just that o worry it will only get more expensive in future and it is lovely. Interstitial they actually included an extinct lungfish too.
I was under the impression that Kamuysaurus was one of the smaller Hadrosaurs,  but anyway I have ordered that one and the Mamenchisaurus and Megalosaurus so they should arrive soon.
I thought the cryptic name for the Triceratops was just in reference to it being a more unusual scheme, though in my opinion looks much better than the plainer one.

[SBell]

Great new acquisitions, always a nice read. The Irritator is tempting but I worked out that the deluxe version plus postage to the UK is £80. And there's bound to be customs fees on top, so looking at £100 essentially just for one figure. It just that o worry it will only get more expensive in future and it is lovely. Interstitial they actually included an extinct lungfish too.
I was under the impression that Kamuysaurus was one of the smaller Hadrosaurs,  but anyway I have ordered that one and the Mamenchisaurus and Megalosaurus so they should arrive soon.
I thought the cryptic name for the Triceratops was just in reference to it being a more unusual scheme, though in my opinion looks much better than the plainer one.

I honestly only really want the lungfish (I mean, the dino is nice but...lungfish!). If there's anyone out there that only wants the dino, let's talk.

[Leyster]

Yeah, not an especially large animal, but perhaps not a full-sized one either. Given that I tend to display things by scale, this will be the only spinosaurid on its shelf.

Out of curiosity, is it a trick of the photo or your Irritator touches the ground with the tip of the tail, when displayed without the base?

[Halichoeres]

Great new acquisitions, always a nice read. The Irritator is tempting but I worked out that the deluxe version plus postage to the UK is £80. And there's bound to be customs fees on top, so looking at £100 essentially just for one figure. It just that o worry it will only get more expensive in future and it is lovely. Interstitial they actually included an extinct lungfish too.
I was under the impression that Kamuysaurus was one of the smaller Hadrosaurs,  but anyway I have ordered that one and the Mamenchisaurus and Megalosaurus so they should arrive soon.
I thought the cryptic name for the Triceratops was just in reference to it being a more unusual scheme, though in my opinion looks much better than the plainer one.

Thank you! FWIW I think the Kamuysaurus works at 1:40 (your preferred scale, if I recall correctly?) as a smaller adult; the scale is based on what I think is the only known specimen. As for the Irritator, it definitely is expensive, especially with customs and shipping. It might be worth asking ED if they plan to stock it. If not, maybe a few UK collectors might find it worthwhile to join forces and order a batch of several, with one customs fee and one international parcel, and then distribute it locally. I've done that a few times here with stateside collectors, such as with the AAoD Australovenator.

Yeah, not an especially large animal, but perhaps not a full-sized one either. Given that I tend to display things by scale, this will be the only spinosaurid on its shelf.

Out of curiosity, is it a trick of the photo or your Irritator touches the ground with the tip of the tail, when displayed without the base?

Depends on the substrate. In this photo, it does touch the ground, but that surface isn't quite level. On my bookshelf, the tail is just a few millimeters clear of the ground, but it is clear of it.

[Bokisaurus]

Look at of them goodies 😃
That irritator turned out nicely and that poor fish!🤣

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

Lovely new Figures. I totally agree on the Kamuysaurus, its a real gem.
A really interesting read on the Lungfish. I would also like to have the Irritator, since i do not have one, but as it was said before, shipping and customs to Germany are a bit too much for me and the Figure is quite big and i would want to Display it in a proper way and not stuffed between other Figures.

But was it possible for a dead Lungfish to bend like this? This is not ment as nitpicking, just for the interest. When i look at extant Lungfish that are carried by humans, they clearly cant bend like this. Its Tailfin/tail would roll more to the side and then bend in a natural (Horizontal) way, like the bending when using it to propel itself. Same with the head.
I love this Extra and it clearly looks awesome, but i always thought that it looks a bit like  wabbly jelly

[Flaffy]

The Kamuysaurus is an absolute gem. Hope CollectA will continue to expand their ornithopod range. Maybe even consider remaking their old Procon ornithischians like Tenontosaurus and Camptosaurus in this new style and quality?

And yeah, weird how the Equinoxiodus has thread like fins rather than fleshy lobes of more typical lungfishes. Wish Hugo went for a more Neoceratodus-like sculpt, and did a bit more reseach on lungfish anatomy. But hey, the more fossil fish the better, can't complain.