An egg-centric effort.......

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I have observed quite a few efforts at sculpting and offering various types and design of dinosaur nests, with eggs over the past few years. With the Rebor nests, which were a tad lacking in accuracy and the oversimplified design....or the quite nicely done nests by Kayakasaurus (Yes, I find his designs far more appealing than Rebor's personally, and no offense to Rebor's efforts.) What I feel is missing however is a decent type of egg replica itself.....In 2009 when the British lease on Hong Kong expired, the walls came down on egg collecting as a hobby and made it almost impossible to obtain anything further. The market still offers some eggs, but most of the material coming to market now are the remaindered off less desireable specimens, that are often largely restored, or patched together from several lesser pieces. Even a low end quite rough looking oviraptorid egg easily prices between 800 and 1500 dollars. I am surprised noone has attempted to market replicas of some of these eggs, or create them for the public. I even posted suggesting/offering/asking our forum artists to attempt such as a shapeways model with literally no comments made. I am not a sculpter myself, but...if you want something done...right?

First image is my cat Ziva with a hadrosaur egg for scale. Egg is roughly football shaped and likely a hatched specimen. Confirmed by Ken Carpenter as a hadrosaur egg.




Hadrosaur egg close up


Now I have inserted an alleged Citipatti egg as well. Bear in mind this egg is 7 1/4 inches long, and was within a nest originally with an egg partially under and one over, as well, which removed alot of the shell sadly. Confirmed by Ken Carpenter as a theropod egg of some type.


And an alleged oviraptor egg ......this slightly smaller egg is 6 3/4 inches


And my attempt at creating a Citipatti egg, minus the compression and with more complete shell. I "inflated" the egg and removed some of the flattening effect....

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

Did you make a sculpture or a cast? I think you have a nice collection to cast and share with less-fortunate collectors.

[Sim]

Did you make a sculpture or a cast? I think you have a nice collection to cast and share with less-fortunate collectors.

I have the same thoughts as Pachyrhinosaurus!

By the way amargasaurus, did you know of the Beasts of the Mesozoic accessory packs that are planned so far which include nests with eggs?

[Halichoeres]

Sometimes for teaching I use a really nice life-sized cast of an Oviraptor nest, but I don't really have any idea where it came from! I should inquire.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I have no experience with casting, so I created the single egg from scratch the hard way...starting with a foil shape etc. I was not aware of the beasts of the mesozoic nests...do you have more information or can you elaborate further?I have seen a few nest replicas that were crude and lacked detail, proper structure and what not, but nothing that is close to the real thing .

[Sim]

It looks like you managed to get the texture on your egg sculpture to match that of the real egg!

Here's a link to the Beasts of the Mesozoic line's Kickstarter, the accessory packs can be seen towards the end of the page.  As can be seen near the end of the page, a ceratopsian series might follow this raptor series!  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/992645470/beasts-of-the-mesozoic-raptor-series-action-figure

Here's our forum's thread for this line, if there's anything more you'd like to know about the line, this is the place to ask : http://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=3573.0

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I had been more or less ignoring the line because the focus on raptors is not my deal, although I know alot of people love them. I found the nests at the bottom of the page, and he has done a fairly nice job with it, I think. I am excited to see what the ceratopsian line brings, although given the method of production, it seems likely the focus will be on only the more derived ceratopsians, where the body can be somewhat similar from species to species with only the head being altered.....I will keep an eye on that as well.Thanks for pointing this out Sim, it is nice to see a few people making an effort to create realistic nests, and eggs, rather than ......simple guesswork types with no research or detail

[Sim]

I'm glad to hear you think he's done a nice job with the nests!

As for the ceratopsian series, I think it's quite likely that in addition to the heads some other parts will be different among the ceratopsian figures, since he's made different forelimbs, hindlimbs and tails for various 'raptors'.  I did think based on the part-sharing approach, the larger figures would all be Late Cretaceous ceratopsians, quite possibly all ceratopsids.  Maybe he might do two body types and something like two tail types to cover a variety of ceratopsians, and of course a different head for each?  David has been very open to suggestions from fans, so I think he'd welcome suggestions from you.

The accessory packs present an opportunity to include figures of animals that are related to the focus of the series, but are too anatomically different or much smaller to be made as one of the main part-sharing figures.  If the larger part-sharing figures in the ceratopsian series were indeed all Late Cretaceous ceratopsians/ceratopsids, and accessory packs were made, I thought it would be very nice to have a Psittacosaurus as one of the species in the packs.  Since Psittacosaurus is an interesting and unique-looking ceratopsian genus.  However Psittacosaurus isn't known to have coexisted with any of the Late Cretaceous ceratopsians.  I think it's worth having interesting species from the groups the series focuses on even if they didn't coexist with the larger figures.  I think it's nice to have them go alongside each other, and maybe they'll be able to go well with species from future series too.  That's just how I feel about it though, and I was wondering what you thought about this since you really like ceratopsians?  I'd guess there's a good chance the accessory packs would include ceratopsian nests/eggs like the raptor ones too.

I recently made a post about these aspects in the ceratopsian series in the line's thread, this is my post (Reply #407): http://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=3573.msg138147#msg138147

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I think regarding his line of late Cretaceous ceratopsians, he will likely stick with the derived species more than anything basal, just for accuracy sake. Speaking just for myself, I fail to see the thrill in all these ceratopsians that are so similar with only slight differences in horn placements, frile design and cranial decorations, but the rest of the world seems to thrive on them.
  Given that the bases he is working with and making are diorama type scenes, it seems unlikely he would mix species from various time periods or geographical ranges. My own feeling is that he could quite easily offer a set that is not genus derived...ie raptors, or  ceratopsians, but rather ....Dinosaurs of China, or something similar. Wether he should or shouldnt intermix is a tough call.....some would be annoyed while others would not care.

   Regarding the egg I made, I keep pondering if it would be worth the effort to cast or make copies. I have seen very few realistic replicas offered.....

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Attempting a new species type of egg over the coming few days...this time I lack an in person example to work from and will be forced to rely on images and pictures It is times like these I am rather grateful for my friendship with Postsaur!

[Viergacht]

That's a cool collection! Interesting to see the hadrosaur egg looks about the size of the ostrich eggs I have: http://img07.deviantart.net/176c/i/2015/234/6/f/hands_holding_ostrich_egg_stock_by_rhabwar_troll_stock-d95ikbm.png

I think a sort of half & half sculpt would be really cool - egg on one side, cutaway with an embryo on the other.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

That is a very nice ostrich egg ! It still looks to be smaller than the hadrosaur egg I have, by a few inches and less oval shaped. The hadrosaur egg is roughly comparable to a football ! The hadrosaur eggs were the first type to come out of China in the big egg rush in large quantities and was my first of the group I acquired.
   I avoided sculpting  cutaway style egg because there are at least a few of them already out there availible, including the infamous Baby Louie piece. The baby louie fiasco also is suggestive of the main problem in adding an embryo to most egg types....in that we simply do not know for sure what type of animal most of the known types of dinosaur eggs match up to. While we can compare shell types, and thicknesses, and general egg shapes, it is practically impossible to place a given egg to a given animal and why they are normally named and identified seperately of the type of animal which may have provided the egg. The one smoking gun method is finding embryonics within a given egg, but that is a rare occurrence and eggs of that type are highly sought after.
Without that evidence you may identify an egg based on similarity to another egg found in another part of the world, and then much later a new species may be found that is then linked to the egg you thought was the type you already attempted to establish a link with.

[Viergacht]

I'm not familiar with baby Louie?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Long story short , a company in the US purchased a block of material from a Chinese geologist containing 2-3 large eggs. As the block was prepped and cleaned it became obvious there was either newborn or embryonic material associated with the eggs as well. National geographic did a feature photographed by Louie Psihoyos and a replica was created lifesize suggesting that the embryonic was a therizinosaur . After more prep and visits by Ken Carpenter, Currie and other paleos it was determined the embryo was not likely a therizinosaur afterall, however opinions were divided.
The block itself was brought into the US and purchased by Stonecompany USA, owned by Charlie Magovern , who was recently the target of a federal suit based on the apparent fraudulent trade or import of Chinese dinosaur fossils.
Here is a link to his site, discussing Baby Louie more thoroughly  from his viewpoint.

My own two cents, having spoken with and discussed various fossils with Ken Carpenter myself, is he is probably correct and this is not a therizinosaur. He is well known for his book in fact about eggs and baby dinosaurs , which is a must have for those interested in eggs.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/dinoeggs/hatch/louie/louie1.html

[Viergacht]

Thanks for filling me in! Interesting.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

My pleasure, I thoroughly enjoy discussing dinosaur eggs and related with anyone who cares to talk. I fell in love with the eggs when the great rush from China came, and time has only made me fonder. I was fortunate beyond compare to have opportunity to have Ken Carpenter examine some images of my eggs and confirm they were all four in fact dinosaur eggs . I also collect dinosaur eggshells, which is another rather amusing hobby all its own.

[Viergacht]

Oh yes, me too! They're really fascinating, I'd love to learn more about them.

I can measure the Ostrich egg if you'd like - all I know off the top of my head was it was a week's worth of breakfast! My MIL's friend has a small flock and gave us the egg as gift, and man alive did it take some effort to break into.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

So let the games begin....as I collected eggs from China, I would sometimes have to tune out for a bit while finances calmed down. At some point or another I missed the wave of segnosaur eggs that were imported to the US....so I figured it might be interesting to see if I could just....make myself one.

[Viergacht]

Groovy! What kind of clay are you using there?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Clay is simple air drying Polyform. Thanks !