The phytosaur Redondasaurus about to put the bite on the dicynodont Placerias. Photo by the author at the NMMNHS.

Friday Photos: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

ByRiley Black
May 11, 2012
3 min read

I’ll take any excuse for a fossil road trip. There are so many quarries, museums, and other roadside paleo stops that even after a year of criss-crossing the west, I haven’t yet seen them all. And earlier this week, I realized that I was running out of time to visit the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science before my next book – A Date With a Dinosaur – is due. I didn’t care that the drive was ten hours both ways.  I had to see the museum’s unique displays of Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous creatures for a few key points in my book. Here are a few shots from my all-too-brief trip to the museum galleries.

The Cretaceous toothed bird Hesperornis. This is one of the few life restorations of the bird I've seen in my museum journeys. Photo by the author at the NMMNHS.
'Spike' the Pentaceratops out front of the NMMNHS. I had wanted to see this dinosaur ever since, as a kid, I saw a documentary showing the sculpture's installation. Photo by the author.
A super-sized Allosaurus - labeled 'Saurophaganax' by the museum - threatens an immense Diplodocus. Photo by the author, at the NMMNHS.
'Alberta' the Albertosaurus stands just across from the Pentaceratops, although we now know that Cretaceous New Mexico's tyrannosaurs actually belonged to a different genus. Photo by the author at the NMMNHS.

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