The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Direct to Walmart Carnotaurus!

 

It's literally the last day of the month, and last month was the second time I skipped this, my longest-running feature. It crossed my mind that I genuinely feel that letting this go would truly be letting part of me fade away. So, I decided to see what I could dig out, and what I came up with was this, a Carnotaurus from my extensive direct-to-Walmart collection. It also happened that I already had a couple photos saved. Here's a couple pics on the Couch Mark 1, originally taken at the same time as my pachycephalosaurs post.

"What are orthodontics???"

Looking back, what I remember about Carnotaurus was that it was quite possibly the biggest "new" discovery at the time I was going from a kid obsessed with dinosaurs to a semi-mature student of paleontology. Sure, there were other major finds in the late 1980s-mid-'90s timeframe, like the nesting Oviraptor colonies, the first semi-complete spinosaurs, and Argentinosaurus and Giganotosaurus (which I still haven't gotten to). These, however, all felt like extensions of the old, either new and better remains of creatures we already knew about or bigger versions of same. Carnotaurus was something truly different, possessing not only horns but a very odd skull. On top of that, the type specimen was found with the most extensive skin impressions of any carnosaur, giving us our first (and in hindsight inconclusive) look at what they were really like. As a bonus, they got into the Jurassic Park franchise starting with The Lost World the novel, and had a role in Disney's Dinosaur. (That one really went down the memory hole...) Now, here's some more new pics on the Couch Mark 2.

Cut me out of the movie, will you?

And of course one with the Truckstop Queen...

Now for the part that really interested me, I had previously featured Carnotaurus thanks to the Mystery Box. As I commented at the time, that particularly cheap and silly awesome-looking dino actually did a good job capturing what made Carnotaurus unique, particularly its short skull and oddly small lower jaw. By comparison, the present specimen has struck me as a case of attempting to make it look "normal"; you can still see the features there, but they are subtle where the "real" thing is jarring. (There are also things that are just off, especially the oversized feet.) Here are a few comparison shots that for the most part confirmed my point. 

Yeah, who has buckteeth and bunny ears now?

Another detail is the jaw. It might be apparent that there is a joint to open and close the mouth. On inspection, it didn't open any further than already shows in the pics. More curiously, it doesn't really stay shut on its own. I finally had to put my hand in the frame to get a pic of the mouth shut. Here it is for completeness.

One more development in this saga is that I finally sighted another example of the little Carnotaurus in the wild, as part of a brand new set (in Walmart...). I had previously estimated this was from the 1990s, which I stand by as the likeliest provenance for the sculpt. It's always possible that this has been recycled for 20-30 years. As for the big guy, I decided to give him a few comparison shots with my other previously covered Walmart dinos, the spino and the Retro Raptor. Overall, it's not quite as good, but still well-done and definitely big. Here we go...

Don't make me start the argument whether I could kill a T. rex again...

So, that's one post to continue the run. These are always fun to do, and this time around, it actually went pretty quickly. I could talk about past, present and future, but what it all comes down to is that it's nice to work with a dino that's really cool. And why not one more with the Queen?

You think you're big? King Kong is my ex...

And that is all for now, always more to come!