A Removable Mount for the Individual Cranial Bones of a Juvenile Dinosaur

Mounting original fossil material of juvenile animals can present challenges beyond working with adult material, primarily because the lack of fusion in juvenile bones translates into a greater number of smaller elements to be mounted. In the present case, this paper describes the fabrication of a mount for a subadult ornithopod dinosaur. The fragile, unfused cranial bones required the creation of separate cradles for individual or groups of bones. For a typical mounted adult vertebrate skull, only two structural units for the cranium and the lower jaws would be necessary.