The Legion Of Silly Dinosaurs: Winston the Uintathere and friends!

 

It's time for the weekend dino post, and if there's one thing I've made clear, it's that my definition of "dino" isn't limited to dinosaurs even when I'm ranting that they aren't dinosaurs. For the purposes of this feature, the toy dino isn't about the creature but the nature of the toy: cheap, usually small, often outdated, and of course silly AWESOME (the gag I always wanted to do). This time around, I have one that I've had for a while now, and just maybe brought me through some hard times in my life. Here is Winston, the uintathere.

This little guy has a backstory in two parts. The toy is based on Uintatherium, a creature that lived in present-day Utah between 50 and 40 million years ago. It was the first mammal to reach megafauna size, probably about the size of a hippo. While it looks vaguely like a rhino, it was really a separate lineage called Dinocerata that lived and died while the actual ancestors of the rhinoceroses were still the size of pigs. Under further scrutiny, it had a number of features that were unusual for animals of its size, particularly a pair of large teeth with chin flanges to protect them. Even the iconic "horns" were stranger than they look, more like the knobs of a giraffe (of course, I know they're called ossicones) than anything else. It's presumed that they were vegetarians, though omnivory isn't out of the question. Here's a few more pics of Winston.

Now for the toy, I found this little guy at a rock show right at the beginning of 2015, right when I was starting my first job after almost 3 and a half years of searching (see my stalking post). I got him for maybe 50 cents, from a seller who as I recall had a bin of paleo toys. The only identifying mark was an infamous name Jaru, which I'm sure I've featured before. I then decided to take him to my job, which in hindsight was ludicrously tolerant (see the tale of the CVS giant robot). In pretty short order, I set up a little diorama that also included a Diatryma, which lived in about the same time and place, and an anachronistic plesiosaur. Here's a reconstruction of what it would have looked like. Aw, look at the little tree!

"Meat eater, plant eater, can't we all just chill?"

A little later, I got another uintathere as part of a patchisaur set. It was a sculpt I'm sure I had sighted before, bigger than Winston but a lot cruder in appearance. I came up with the name Winnie, which didn't help generate any further affection. Here's a couple pics.

And here's a detail that makes this one semi-traceable, a fairly pointless hollow space in the belly. I suppose it saved a fraction of a penny on plastic, but it's still just odd. I know I've seen the same detail in pics from other collectors, some of which I believe were said to date back to the 1970s. It certainly could have happened...

Then, just a couple months back, I picked up this with most of a gift card. It's from a manufacturer called CollectA, marked year 2017. It's probably the most impressive example yet, which might not be saying much. It's obviously fanciful and a bit wonky, but it certainly gets away from the rhino-with-extra-horns mold. Here's a few pics.

If it seems like I'm not giving the detail I usually do, it's because I'm having to work around the detail. It turns out this thing is anatomically correct, and definitely male, and there are places I don't go. Here's a few more closeups of as much as I care to show.

Frankly, I wasn't comfortable holding it in the places I am here.

And here's a couple pics of the tag.

Not shown: "Small parts, choking hazard." (CHOKE.)

And with that, I'm wrapping this up. It may seem random as usual, but this is one of the things that means a lot more to me than might usually come across. Maybe, just maybe, what I do will make a little more sense. That's all for now, more to come!