Just wanted to show off the latest project, in an attempt to spur the board on.

Nice. Where's it housed at?

The original is at Okaloosa-Walton College in Florida. That's where this copy is headed as well.

That's really awesome! That one's from the Bluffport marl of Alabama if I remember correctly. I found an identical Plioplatecarpus in the Bluffport marl of Mississippi. It's now in the collections of the University of Kansas. David Burnham worked on another one from Mississippi for his Master's degree at U. of New Orleans. He's planning on naming a new species for these guys. I think it was P. gundi or gundyi....something like that. How much are the skull casts?

I worked for Dave from 1998 (when he came to KU) till 2004 (when I moved to CO). It is definitely a new species, and it looks like UNO 8611-2 is pretty close to the OWC critter. The main difference is that the anterior dentary teeth of the OWC animal are VERY strongly procumbent. The dentaries and braincase on this skull are from UNO 8611-2, due to how broken up and basically not there the OWC's were. Dr. Kraig Derstler was up visiting this past week (before the blizzard) and saw it, and I've sent a bunch of photos to Dave. Both said they were amazed at how closely the OWC and UNO animals matched.

I have no idea how much a cast costs, and unfortunately we don't have it on our website yet. It'll be there soon though. As well as the freshly completed 3d Ichthyodectes... it looks sweet, in painting now.

The one that you placed with KU, is that the one that Dave and Mort Green aquired a few years ago?

I think I got that specimen to Kansas in mid or late 2001 so I guess you were still there at the time. I have a couple of photos of some of the bones but I don't know how to load them up on the board here. I guess I have to have a website where they are stored.
Dr Bryan at OWC sent me a few pictures of their specimen years ago when I was volunteering at the Memphis Pink Palace Museum. Everything was pretty much the same size and shape so I thought they were from the same species. I attributed the procumbent teeth to some type of postmortem deformation but I never did see the OWC specimen in person.

Go ahead and set yourself up a (free) photobucket account. Then you can just link from there using the img function. Just be sure to resize the pics, or the mods will awaken from their slumber to chastize you!

Mods? Oh yeah, that's me. :) I'll try the photobucket thing.

Here are a couple of pics....I hope.
Quadrates:


Frontal/Parietal:


Pmx/max:


Nothing over 50 kb so I hope they're not too large.

Looks really similar to me! No mistaking that pineal eye that you can putt a golf ball into. It's interesting that all of the ones I've seen have the frontal/parietal and postorbitals all fused into one assembly.

Speaking of mosasaurs, are you planning on attending the symposium that Mike Everhart is putting together at Fort Hays State?

Oh btw, here's a photo of the OWC critter before resto. Note that the left dentary is actually the right maxilla, and the front of the snout is about 2 inches too far back.

I'm hoping to attend the symposium however, the dates of the meeting fall within the week of final exams around here. I should know more by January or so.

The reason the frontal and parietal are together in the photo is because I glued them back together. :) The right postorbitofrontal was reattached too. I was hoping to do a restoration of the skull but soon realized it was beyond my skill level at the time. It does have a really large pineal foramen. Burnham thought that it might have been used as a depth indicator due to increased water pressure pushing in. It's a neat idea though I'm not sure that any animal would appreciate increased pressure on its brain :omg:

Dr Bryan did send me that photo of the OWC specimen. I always wondered what was up with the "dentary". It never looked right to me...now I know why. :D

Yes the way it was displayed, it looks likd of like a duck...

I reprepped it, took a lot of the iron concretions off, and seperated as many of the individual elements and poorly positioned cast teeth as I could. Tried to start with a clean slate. It's much easier when you can mold and cast all the individual elements, then heat and bend the casts to take out distortion before reassembling and remolding them. Plus now we also have molds of all the unrestored elements as well. Might come in handy when the critter is finally described.

Except we can't do anything at the moment... my fault, I know.

Yikes! I hope we don't get any spammers for a few days! :omg:

Here's another photo of my Plioplatecarpus skull that I found while digging through some old files.

That looks really nice. I could restore that in a month or so, espescially with the parts I have now. Should call Dave and see if he's interested in mounting it.