What was wrong with the bones, and how do you
conserve them?
Many bones had cracks, making them very fragile.
Some bones had developed pyrite disease, a condition in which
the mineral pyrite, or fool's gold, grows inside the bone and
breaks it up from the inside. We are treating each bone with
special hardeners to fill the cracks and encapsulate the pyrite
disease, and are making special cradles to hold the bones stress-free.
Most of the original fossil bones will be safely stored in the
collection.
So the new skeletal mount won't be the original
fossil?
Correct. It will be an accurate, but better replica.
Some replica bones will be made through the traditional method
of molding and casting the real bones. To replace the duckbill
dinosaur foot bones, Triceratops foot bones have finally
been discovered, and we have gotten replacement replica bones.
But other replica bones, the ones to replace the sculpted or
wrong sized bones, will be made by using data from the original
bones that we have manipulated in the computer to produce far
more accurate replacements.
