Today, some appeasement for the theropod lovers I shafted in the last post by showing only a duck’s butt.
The Sauriermusem Aathal has a bunch of great dinosaur skeletons, some of which I mentioned previously. Among them is one of the coolest large theropod finds, the most complete Allosaurus fragilis ever found. It is “Big Al 2”, found in 1996 in the Howe-Stephens Quarry on the famous Howe Ranch near Shell, Wyoming.
The beast is really amazing: roughly 90% complete, with on a few small pieces of the skull, a few small bones of the hands and feet, and the tip of the tail missing. There are also a bunch of pathologies, including a series of broken ribs.
Here’s a closer view of the skull:
brain endocast in front. Ain’t it beautiful?
dinosaurpalaeo 
You know, “Big Al 2” has to be about the lamest specimen nickname ever.
Well, there’s a reason for the lame name… It was the SMA team who found “Big Al”, but it turned out that the land they thought was private was in fact public. So they had to turn “Big Al” over to the MOR. And thus “Big Al 2” is the “replacement”, kinda.
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