My weekend roadtrip...Denver Museum of Nature and science, and Sternberg Museum

[amargasaurus cazaui]

WARNING IMAGE INTENSIVE  more than 50 images linked


Rockshop in Canon City Colorado..some of my take.



Large Sauropod pieces...I bought them all. The large round one is a femur end. It weighed right at fifty pounds by itself


Wheelbarrow full of bone chunks I got.....while at the shop I acquired roughly 500 pounds of bones.Majority if not all would be Morrison formation material and much of it is sauropod material. I brought back the large round femur end, and part of the shaft to the same bone..between the two they weighed in at 100 pounds. Cost was 3.00 per pound.



Samll nugget I chose from the pallet, cleaned up back at the hotel....notice the brilliant colors.


Once done at the rock shop in Canon city, it was to a hotel to rest, up early the following morning. Mother and stepdad took the van and headed back to Kansas to unload the bone and my brother and I pressed on to Denver to.....

Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Entry has a dancing T-rex....huge.


Parking Garage area...Ceratosaurus? Allosaurus? menacing a rearing Camarasaurus


Face only a mother could love...



Was delighted to see this guy....when I was ten I had visited here and he was sitting in front of the museum, and you drop coins inside and he roars loudly. Now he sits safely inside along the wall but still works perfectly !!!




Supended over the entry hall...





Gift shop....
LOADED with Carnegies and Safari's....Doug Watson would be proud so much of his work is for sale here.


Here fishy....


Whale over the escolators

Permian battle....guessing this mount was the basis for the model I recently saw offered



Diplocaulus




Seymouria



For my friend Halicheroes



Da big boyz.....



One of my key reasons for visiting the museum was to see the mounts Ken Carpenter had done there...I know from my reading that he re-mounted the diplodocus, and raised the tail and bent the neck...he mounted the allosaurus and stegosaurus battle...and he also mounted the Gargoyleosaurus, his own discovery. I am unsure about the Edmontosaurus, and the smaller animals presented.
Of course I was wanting to examine the "dippy" having recently acquired a vert from one identified by...Ken Carpenter so....no brainer there





Allosaurus /stegosaurus battle








Ceolophysis

The gargoyle


Edmontosaurus



Stuff





From there it was back to Kansas to Hays  to visit the Sternberg museum...so here we go again
Inside the entrance....



Turtles !!











The real one..the original fossil






and then is when I knew Blade would have been speechless..the exhibits wrap around the building as you slowly wind upwards and enter this area......










This one was animatronic and was chewing its food....

The KING...life sized and very nice...


Bench to rest...


From there it was back to eastern Kansas and home...From Friday morning at seven AM to saturday night at 8 pm we covered 1300 miles, two museums and brought back a quarter ton of dinosaur bones. Busy weekend.

[Gwangi]

Fantastic pictures, makes me want to move out west all that much more. Just the rock shops alone do, the museums and fossil sites of course being added bonuses. That Allosaurus and Stegosaurus diorama is beautiful, I've always paused to admire it when I spot it in books or online. The reconstructions look nice too, and that is indeed Ceratosaurus picking on the Camarasaurus.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Fantastic pictures, makes me want to move out west all that much more. Just the rock shops alone do, the museums and fossil sites of course being added bonuses. That Allosaurus and Stegosaurus diorama is beautiful, I've always paused to admire it when I spot it in books or online. The reconstructions look nice too, and that is indeed Ceratosaurus picking on the Camarasaurus.

My brother took me in his BMW and did all the camera work...all I had to do was point! That rock shop we raided is where a month ago my mom had scored the Diplodocus vert, so they asked me if I would like to go there myself and see what I could find. I did what is called high grading, sorted roughly five hundred pounds off the pallet...at 3.00 a pound you can get an idea what I spent there alone. I want to do it again in six months and get another pile. The allosaurus /stegosaurus mount was Ken Carpenter's work and even sports a baby stegosaurus or maybe two....and running along in the small group behind it are a bunch of Othnelia Rex mounts....if you decide you want them I can send you the orginal high res images Gwangi.The dippy has a bent neck and some digital specilists had said it could not have done this..Ken Carpenter spent an evening with the verts lying on the floor manipulating them determine their range of motion. Once he remounted the dinosaur he applied what he felt was the proper amount of bend.....and then raised the tail. I was surprised at the Gargoylesaurus, it is really not as large as I expected.
Thanks for confirming the Ceratosaurus, I have been so busy I had not had time to track it down and say for sure, but it definitely looks like a ceratosaurus.

[Patrx]

Great photos! I visited the Denver museum last year with my dad, we've been going to Colorado for as long as I can remember. He goes to climb mountains, I go there to ogle prehistoric animal bones. Cañon City used to have a museum of its own, at least until a few years back.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Great photos! I visited the Denver museum last year with my dad, we've been going to Colorado for as long as I can remember. He goes to climb mountains, I go there to ogle prehistoric animal bones. Cañon City used to have a museum of its own, at least until a few years back.

We drove past the allosaurus there in Canon city several times, and my mother said there is a dinosaur place open again in there..time did not permit me to dope out what was happening there though. Saw the building though and the dinosaur is outside in all its gaudy blue glory. Canon city also is where that rock shop is if you ever want a piece of bone for a fair price like I did.

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

It looks like you had quite a weekend! I heard that there is even a dinosaur-themed hotel down there... maybe for your next time  . Living on the east coast, I have always wanted to go out west to see these things for myself. I'm glad this turned out to be a success.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

My front porch where i was sorting dinosaur bones most of the day yesterday...my chosen keepers.Notice the rainbow of colors and large sizes.....

[Libraraptor]

Great pictures!

[Viking Spawn]

Indeed!  Thanks for sharing!  It looks like a great place to visit!!!

[MLMjp]

 Pictures like this just make me  want even more to travel to USA only to see museums like this one
Of course I would do other things but...I want this so much

[suspsy]

Wicked!

[Halichoeres]

For my friend Halicheroes

Hey, thanks! Whether it's a sex/age morph or a valid genus, still my favorite pachycephalosaur...

[MLMjp]

Wicked!

I think I exagerated a bit
But who doesnt want to visit such interesting places?(if we talk about people interested in prehistoric life of course)

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Loved the entire trip but I admit I am particularly fond of having gotten to see the "Dippy" and bring back another couple hundred pounds of bones to add to my collection. Still sorting, dividing and placing some with homes, but the ones I kept are so wow to me....the colors and the sheer sizes are stunning.

[Takama]

I see you went to the Sterburg musieum as well.   I been there once, only i went through the dinosaur section first, before going down the marine reptile section.   That is where i got my Carnegie Tylosaurus.


Im happy to see photos of the Denver museuim again. i been there only once, and im not sure if i will be there ever again.

[Doug Watson]

Gift shop....
LOADED with Carnegies and Safari's....Doug Watson would be proud so much of his work is for sale here.

Thanks for that, I count 4 of mine, there are a lot of Carnegies, Ken should get them to stock the Sauropelta, I don't see that one. Two more great museums that I have only read about. I wish digital cameras had come along earlier, I have lots shots from past museum visits but unfortunately they are all on slides and that means a lot of scanning. Great shots I am envious.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I admit to spending perhaps too much getting them, but I wanted a few figures that I could say I got from the museum while there...I bought the Pachycephalosaurus, and Tapejara, but could not remember if you had done those. I was surprised at the number of Carnegies and that they had so many but a it surprised they had no Diplodocus given the mount in the museum itself. Perhaps then again, that was why it was not there anymore. Now I just need to start lobbying you to sculpt the gargoyeosaurus..so I have an excuse to send that one to Ken to sign as well.
    I can also tell you it was a special delight to see these dinosaurs again, having been to the museum around forty years ago. Ken is known for making his dinosaur mounts appear to live and appear realistic, and looking at the Stegosaurus vs Allosaurus it is obvious why. I read something he posted somewhere else, where he was speaking about how digital modelers had concluded that Diplodocus had very limited ability to move its neck in certain ways so he spent an entire night just manually moving the verts around to determine if it was possible or not....today when you view the diplodocus you can see what he decided as the neck curves considerably but quite lifelike. The more I learn about his work the more amazed I am at all he has done and knows.

[Tumbleweeds]

We drove past the allosaurus there in Canon city several times, and my mother said there is a dinosaur place open again in there..time did not permit me to dope out what was happening there though. Saw the building though and the dinosaur is outside in all its gaudy blue glory. Canon city also is where that rock shop is if you ever want a piece of bone for a fair price like I did.

If you don't mind me asking, what was the name of the rock shop? I haven't been to the museum with the Allosaurus out front yet, it's always been closed when I go by but there's a new one opening next year.
If you make it out this way again you might want to check out the dinosaur tracks on Skyline drive, just west of Canon City. Here's a youtube video of Skyline Drive (not mine)https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=39&v=0oxMGAawrHE Keep in mind once you go through the gate there's no backing up or turning around - you are committed! It's not a drive for the faint of heart. The tracks are on the left at 2:51, he passes them but doesn't stop. I posted a pic of them when I drove up there. The tracks are actually above you as you go by.
The Stegosaurous that was outside the visitors center was moved to the west side of town too.
I would recommend you see the Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, about 90 minutes from Canon City. I can post pics and give more info on some other things to see later, if you're interested.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

The rock shop we raided was the Gold Mine Rock Shop, which is a rather large well stocked and considerable rockhound's dream. Much of the material is on open air pallets and priced by the pound, from Lepidolite, to Green Brazilian Quartz, to Coprolite and yes, dinosaur bone of course. If you are familiar with the shop , they use several mine trolley cars as bins to hold material they have for sale.
   While I was there in the course of two hours, I high graded a quarter ton of dinosaur bone off the pallet they had. I brought it home and sent about three hundred pounds of it to friends of mine all over the country who could not make the trip themselves. I kept some specimens for my own collection or for sphere work down the road.
   I can tell you that counting four of the specimens I kept from the shop, they account for 155 pounds in my collection of bones. Most of the pieces offered on that pallet that day were at least 15-20 pounds each.

[Tumbleweeds]

Thanks for that, I'm not familiar with it off the top of my head but now I know what to look for next time I go through CC.