This is the sixth installment in a series on the Apatosaurus maquette from Sideshow Collectibles. Other posts in the series are:

• Part 1: intro
• Part 2: the head
• Part 3: the neck
• Part 4: body, tail, limbs, base, and skull
• Part 5: posture
• Part 7: verdict

Texture and color deserve discussion on two levels: biological plausibility, and level of execution.

The skin texture is wrinkled, with a few scattered warts or tubercles. The tail is crowned with a line of low spines, as previously discussed here. We know from skin impressions that sauropods had naked skin, with non-overlapping, generally hexagonal scales ranging from 1-4 cm in diameter (Czerkas 1994, Platt and Hasiotis 2006).

Would the individual scales be visible at the scale of this sculpture? The maquette is 1.1 meters long in a straight line from the right side of the mouth to the tip of the tail, and I measure it as 1.27 meters along the dorsal body margin. Most mounted apatosaurs are in the neighborhood of 70 feet long (21 meters), and the monster at the OMNH is 92 feet (28 meters). The maquette is therefore between 1/16 and 1/22 scale, depending on how big an animal it is supposed to represent (I almost wrote, “assuming it is an adult”, but most mounted sauropods are demonstrably subadult; even the monster apatosaur from Oklahoma has some elements unfused). An unusual but not unheard-of scale for dinosaur figures is 1/18, so that may have been the goal here, for a “in life” length of 75.5 feet (23 meters).

Back to the epidermal, as opposed to proportional, scales. A 4-cm scale on a real Apatosaurus would be about 2 mm on the maquette, and the more common 1-cm scales would be about 0.5 mm. Those would be pretty darned difficult to sculpt and cast in any way would that make them recognizable, so I think we can safely overlook the absence of visible scales on the maquette (warts excepted). Would scaly skin bunch and fold like the skin on the maquette? Beats me. From my experiences with turtles, some of which are pretty darned wrinkly, I wouldn’t rule it out. So I judge the texture plausible. And the level of detail in the execution is phenomenal. I said in the head post that the level of detail you see there is perpetuated through the entire sculpt, and I stand by that. The maquette invites–and withstands–close scrutiny.

The color of the maquette is interesting without being vibrant: olive green above, shading into a tannish-yellow below, with stripes on the tail and faint dark freckles on the neck, body, and limbs. The freckles remind me of the scattered dark spots sometimes seen on the skin of elephants, so that may be a deliberate homage. Finally, the dorsal surfaces of the neck, body, and proximal tail are mottled with off-white or grayish splotches that recall the spotting on some deer.

Now, I am typically an ardent proponent of flamboyant dinosaurs (see here and here). If someone had asked me to design an Apatosaurus maquette, I would have done things differently. I would have slapped on the spines and dewlaps and inflatable display sacs until this thing looked like the three-way love child of Todd Marshall’s Spinosaurus, a bird-of-paradise, and the 80s hair metal band of your choice.

That’s what I would have done, if someone asked me to design an Apatosaurus maquette. But now that I see the one that was actually produced, I would change almost nothing. Because the underlying anatomy would get lost, and the thing would become just a billboard for all the flamboyant gloop (just like some real animals). And because not every animal is a head-to-toe wack job; for every Golden Pheasant there are roughly a thousand little brown passerines.

So the color is good. Great, even. It’s really hard to convey how lifelike this thing looks, as if at any moment it might just stroll right off the end of my bookcase. Heck, I’ve seen lots of real animals that looked less alive that this maquette (some lizards, many amphibians). That the overall design and level of detail can inspire that reaction in anyone is a big win. That it can make me feel that way, when I should be maximally on guard against any mistakes, is even better.

But now I’m starting to break the bounds of objectivity, so I’ll stop here. I’ll provide a final objective verdict, and also give my subjective impressions, in the next, and final, post.

References

• Czerkas, S. 1994. The history and interpretation of sauropod skin impressions. GAIA 10: 173-182.
• Platt, B.F., and Hasiotis, S.T. 2006. Newly discovered sauropod dinosaur tracks with skin and foot-pad impressions from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. Palaios 21: 249-261.