The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[ceratopsian]

Your photo of Kosmoceratops has "forced"  me to buy another model.  I had been tempted when I placed my Backerkit order, but in the end I resisted.  I already had a couple of representatives of this taxon, plus I'd ordered 10 or 11 BotMs and I really wasn't sure how I would feel about the articulation when they arrived.  It's so beautiful I'll add one to my order when Everything Dinosaur gets its delivery!

[Shonisaurus]

Your photo of Kosmoceratops has "forced"  me to buy another model.  I had been tempted when I placed my Backerkit order, but in the end I resisted.  I already had a couple of representatives of this taxon, plus I'd ordered 10 or 11 BotMs and I really wasn't sure how I would feel about the articulation when they arrived.  It's so beautiful I'll add one to my order when Everything Dinosaur gets its delivery!

We are two now! I will also buy the kosmoceratops at everythingdinosaur. One of the best dinosaur shops in Europe and the world.

[Halichoeres]

Hey, I've got that Struthiosaurus, but in pink! 😱

You definitely have the superior version then.

Your photo of Kosmoceratops has "forced"  me to buy another model.  I had been tempted when I placed my Backerkit order, but in the end I resisted.  I already had a couple of representatives of this taxon, plus I'd ordered 10 or 11 BotMs and I really wasn't sure how I would feel about the articulation when they arrived.  It's so beautiful I'll add one to my order when Everything Dinosaur gets its delivery!

I'm not sorry at all. And wow, that's going to be quite a herd!

[Megalosaurus]

Hi Tim. Those flat metals are really interesting. And you have made really nice additions to your collection.

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

That sudden and unexpected drop in quality makes me laugh. First those beautiful BotM Ceratopsians...and then this thing!

: D  : D


Wonderful Photos. I love the lighting and colours in your recent Photographs. In Combination with that Backdrop. That fantastic, Retro looking Backdrop. Lovely as always, good to have here. I really like the sometimes less screaming colours on Wave 2, but will still pass on the BotM Ceratopsians.

[Bokisaurus]

Those BoTM figures are nice, but my Lordy the size! I may end up getting just a couple of sample just like with the raptor series. As much as I love ceratopsians and the series, the size and cost is just a bit too much for me

[Halichoeres]

Hi Tim. Those flat metals are really interesting. And you have made really nice additions to your collection.

Thank you, Juan!

That sudden and unexpected drop in quality makes me laugh. First those beautiful BotM Ceratopsians...and then this thing!

Wonderful Photos. I love the lighting and colours in your recent Photographs. In Combination with that Backdrop. That fantastic, Retro looking Backdrop. Lovely as always, good to have here. I really like the sometimes less screaming colours on Wave 2, but will still pass on the BotM Ceratopsians.

Those BoTM figures are nice, but my Lordy the size! I may end up getting just a couple of sample just like with the raptor series. As much as I love ceratopsians and the series, the size and cost is just a bit too much for me

Thank you both very much! Yeah, the BotM figures are definitely not for every collection. And in time I expect a lot of mine will be replaced with smaller versions of the same taxa. For now, though, I'm pretty happy with them.

Some Paleozoic plants! This is the last batch of Schmalkalders that I plan to keep (the sets included several retro tetrapods that aren't really to my taste). Some of these were straightforwardly identified, but some were quite challenging. They're sold on Schmalkalder's web site as 30mm scale, but most of these are much smaller than that, which means they're a pretty cool stand-alone display, but there is very little in the way of other figures that would work well with them (maybe the Safari Good Luck mini Dimetrodon?).


Haliserites, allegedly
Scale: maybe about 1:10, but see below
Engraver: Horst Neumeister
Silurian - Cretaceous, but only because of lax taxonomy
Haliserites is a form genus of algal thalli, named for its resemblance to the extant phaeophyte genus Haliseris, whose name means "sea endive." The type species, Haliserites reichii, was named by Sternberg himself based on Cretaceous specimens from Eurasia. Other members of this complete mess of a genus have been named based on fossils from nearly every period of the Mesozoic and Paleozoic, and they probably aren't even all in the same supergroup. Its namesake isn't even a plant, strictly speaking, but a heterokont like kelps or slime nets. H. reichii is probably a secondarily aquatic vascular plant, but if this is based on one of the Paleozoic species, who knows. This particular figure was included in the Cambrian section of Schmalkalder's Paleozoic set, but that's actually one of the few periods where I could find no references to the genus. If it's compared to the "sea endive," this is about 1:10, but it's pretty flexible if you think of it as any random aquatic photosynthesizer. Myself, I'm calling it Taeniocrada although that too is a disaster of a genus whose holotype might be a tracheophyte.


These antiarchs are also displayed against Haliserites, supposedly, but these thalli would be enormous by comparison and so probably work better as some other taxon. They scale okay with the Acanthostega, though.


cf. Lepidodendron & [cf. Psaronius[/i] ("Siegelbaum und Farn" per Schmalkalder)
Scale: 1:200 - 1:600
Engraver: Horst Neumeister
Carboniferous - Triassic
Near as I can tell, the German word "Siegelbaum" usually refers to Sigillaria, while Lepidodendron gets the nickname "Schuppenbaum," a pretty direct calque of the derivation of the genus name ("scale tree"). But this figure looks a lot more like Lepidodendron, and is much more accurate as such than the big Aurora tree from the Jungle Swamp kit. The fern could be a young Psaronius tree fern or some other marattialean.


cf. Psaronius ("Baumfarn" per Schmalkalder)
Scale: 1:70 - 1:300
Engraver: Horst Neumeister
Carboniferous - Permian
Unlike the Safari tree fern, this figure's new fronds ("fiddleheads") are opening in the correct orientation. Again, not terribly useful with my existing animal figures, but it does scale well with the other trees in this set.


Equisetales incertae sedis ("Stachelhalme" per Schmalkalder)
Scale: 1:40 - 1:200 depending on species
Engraver: Horst Neumeister
Devonian - present
Like most of these plants, this is included in the Carboniferous section of the Paleozoic set, but I couldn't find many Carboniferous horsetails that look quite like this. The ones you usually find in rocks of this age are large arborescent forms like Arthropitys and Calamites. Horsetails that look like this figure are really more of a Mesozoic thing, but this could represent something like the Calamites subgenus Stylocalamites or some of the earliest species of Equisetites. If somebody has a better idea about these, I'd love to hear about it!


Sigillaria
Scale: 1:200 - 1:350
Engraver: Horst Neumeister
Upper Carbiferous - Upper Permian
There's actually one more figure in this set than Schmalkalder lists on their site. One entry in the list says "Junge Sigillaria," ("young Sigillaria") and I'm not certain whether it refers to this or the following. This figure, though, looks like a fully adult Sigillaria ready to make a bunch of spores.


cf. Jurinodendron
Scale: 1:40 - 1:50
Engraver: Horst Neumeister
Upper Devonian - Carboniferous
This figure is a weird one. Plants with this growth habit show up in various coal measures from the Devonian to the Permian. Some were at one time proposed to be young forms of Sigillaria or other huge lycophytes, which is why I'm not sure that "Junge Sigillaria" doesn't refer to this figure. These plants are no longer regarded as babies because Sigillaria barely branched at all until it was close to maturity. This is a better match for Valmeyerodendron or Jurinodendron. The former was only named in 1972, and these engravings might be older than that. The latter name dates to only 2001, but was proposed as a replacement name for the complete mess that is Cyclostigma (Haughton 1871). Controversy about what to call these fossils persists. In any event, there really were plants that looked like this, although the ends might have been a bit floppier. It's not a bare-branched tree; if you look closely it has a dense coat of microphylls, although a lot of the detail is obscured by molding flash that I'll have to file off when I get around to painting this.


Cordaites
Scale: about 1:200
Engraver: Horst Neumeister
Upper Carboniferous - Upper Permian
A nice, straightforward official identification corresponding well to the actual plant and without significant taxonomic revisions. Very refreshing! These funky trees were true seed plants, probably distant relatives of conifers, but had long, strap-shaped leaves instead of needles (needles are a highly derived feature). Really cool thing to include in this set.


The forests of the Paleozoic were just wildly overbuilt for the herbivores of the time, which to me suggests that competition for light or selection for dispersal capacity were bigger factors in their evolution than herbivory was. I mean, this myriapod is about four times too long to be in scale, and it was the largest herbivore around.


I might start drawing phylogenies like this. Anyway, that's the end of my Schmalkalder acquisitions! One of my favorite aspects of this hobby is when a figure impels me to look up and learn about taxa and ecosystems that I previously knew little about. This set scratched that itch in a big way. If anybody has any of the Brumm flat metal plants that they're willing to let go, let me know!

[Faelrin]

Oh how this makes me long for more figures of prehistoric plants, particularly Paleozoic flora. Very nice set though.

And I very much agree with learning about new ecosystems and taxa. I certainly didn't know about most of these until now, and will certainly be giving reading up on these a go tomorrow for all the ones here. I know so little about prehistoric flora after all.

[SBell]

You mentioned a Schmalkalder website, do you have the link? There's some that are of interest of course!

EDIT...of course I found it after a second search... https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/30-mm-flachfiguren/erdgeschichte-bis-ca-5000-v-chr/

[Leyster]

Fascinating! Fossil plants aren't exactly my area, even if I studied a bit of paleobotany at university.

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

Thanks for the long Post. This Post and a few from before that are really starting to develop more Interest in prehistoric Plants. Your Catalog like Postings are really calming and it is so nice to see sometimes weird Figures/Models here and then have a bit of Information on them, aswell as the timeline, they lived.

They look beautiful and i slowly understand the Interest and fascination in these small Metalmodels.

Edit:

@Faelrin

+1

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for visiting, everyone!

Oh how this makes me long for more figures of prehistoric plants, particularly Paleozoic flora. Very nice set though.

And I very much agree with learning about new ecosystems and taxa. I certainly didn't know about most of these until now, and will certainly be giving reading up on these a go tomorrow for all the ones here. I know so little about prehistoric flora after all.

Yeah, I'd love to have more plants on my shelves. This set is really pretty cheap, although I get that JW collectors have more ephemeral priorities.

You mentioned a Schmalkalder website, do you have the link? There's some that are of interest of course!

EDIT...of course I found it after a second search... https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/30-mm-flachfiguren/erdgeschichte-bis-ca-5000-v-chr/

Oh yes, should have thought to include those.
Paleozoic set: https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/kambrium-silur-devon-karbon-zechstein.html
Mesozoic set: https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/30-mm-flachfiguren/erdgeschichte-bis-ca-5000-v-chr/entstehung-der-erde-teil-2/
Cenozoic set: https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/30-mm-flachfiguren/erdgeschichte-bis-ca-5000-v-chr/entstehung-der-erde-teil-3/
Homo erectus set: https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/altsteinzeit-homo-erectus.html
Stone Age mammoth hunt: https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/30-mm-flachfiguren/erdgeschichte-bis-ca-5000-v-chr/mammutjagd-in-der-steinzeit/
Steppe mammoth hunt: https://www.schmalkalder-zinnfiguren.de/30-mm-flachfiguren/erdgeschichte-bis-ca-5000-v-chr/verfolgung-der-mammuts-in-der-steppe/

Fascinating! Fossil plants aren't exactly my area, even if I studied a bit of paleobotany at university.

I wish I had! I studied a fair amount of botany, but not much about their fossil record.

Thanks for the long Post. This Post and a few from before that are really starting to develop more Interest in prehistoric Plants. Your Catalog like Postings are really calming and it is so nice to see sometimes weird Figures/Models here and then have a bit of Information on them, aswell as the timeline, they lived.

They look beautiful and i slowly understand the Interest and fascination in these small Metalmodels.

Edit:

@Faelrin

+1

Thank you! I'm very pleased that there's someone finding it useful and enjoyable. One nice thing about the metal plant models is that they take up very little space, so can be used as shelf backdrops for animals. I think even if the scale is off, you could set it up so that it implies some distance/perspective.

[Megalosaurus]

Thats a great assortment of beautiful plants.

[stoneage]

I love the style of all these figures.

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

Absolutely! On the Schmalkalder Website a saw a few of the Tin Figures and Stuff painted up from someone that knows how to paint. They looked beautiful.

[Halichoeres]

Thanks, everyone! I'm glad to see enthusiasm for oddities like these.


As a sort of epilogue to the Schmalkalder figures, I finally got the book that their engraver, Horst Neumeister, wrote and illustrated about the fossil record of Europe. It's a charming little book, although not as enlightening as I'd hoped. The figures and the illustrations correspond somewhat loosely. To wit:



The Haliserites illustration is unambiguous, although the specimens so called probably belong instead to something like Taeniocrada.



Neumeister's book shows crinoids of this shape in the Devonian and again in the Triassic, calling them Encrinus, and to my surprise the genus Encrinus actually did have that temporal range. One mystery solved!



The Schmalkalder web site lists this as Illaenus, but in the drawing in the book, (d) is is called Megalaspis and (e) is called Illaenus. The pygidium is a better match for the former, which is now in the genus Megistaspis because Megalaspis was preoccupied by the torpedo scad (a relative of mackerels). I have to admit that the level of detail on this minuscule figure means I'm not terribly sure on this call.

The antiarchs don't appear in the book at all, so no help there.



Several primitive actinopterygian fishes do appear, however, including Palaeoniscum (using the obsolete spelling "Palaeoniscus", it's the one marked b). Unlike the figure, the illustration has the correct single dorsal fin.


I tried to make this line up with anything in the book, like the shark in the illustration above, but it doesn't really look much like any of them so I stand by my ID of cf. Coelacanthus. The shark in the drawing (f) is labeled Pleuracanthus, but that's a genus of beetles, so it actually shows a Xenacanthus. I think you'll agree the figure doesn't look like one of those.

I think I've reached the limit of what I'll be able to learn about this set, since Dr. Neumeister, unfortunately, is deceased. But these figures are a pretty cool legacy.

[Bokisaurus]

Are these figures really flat that you can mount them on a shadow box? It would be cool if they are Ana's have the entire collection framed😃

[Faelrin]

Very interesting to see a book that corresponds with some of these. Congrats on finding that.

[Halichoeres]

Very interesting to see a book that corresponds with some of these. Congrats on finding that.

Thank you!

Are these figures really flat that you can mount them on a shadow box? It would be cool if they are Ana's have the entire collection framed😃

Yep, totally flat:


A skillful paint job could really give these some depth in a shadow box, as you suggest. @Lanthanotus did something similar in his collection thread with the flat metal Saurierkampf set by Berliner. http://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=5539.msg260430#msg260430

[Bokisaurus]

Very interesting to see a book that corresponds with some of these. Congrats on finding that.

Thank you!

Are these figures really flat that you can mount them on a shadow box? It would be cool if they are Ana's have the entire collection framed😃

Yep, totally flat:


A skillful paint job could really give these some depth in a shadow box, as you suggest. @Lanthanotus did something similar in his collection thread with the flat metal Saurierkampf set by Berliner. http://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=5539.msg260430#msg260430

Oh yes, I totally forgot about that diorama box he did, that was awesome!
That would be cool to do with this collection 😃