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Meet the Team That Puts Dinosaurs Back Together
A trip a natural history museum can be an overwhelming, awe-inspiring experience. And while the content therein is itself fascinating, more practical-minded visitors might walk away wondering about logistics, like: “Who’s in charge of dinosaur assembly?” The video above from Great Big Story has the most likely answer: the staff of a Canadian firm called Research Casting International (RCI), who are basically living every dinosaur-loving little kid’s dream.
RCI is kind of a one-stop shop for outfitting museum exhibitions. Staffed by a small but talented “skeleton crew” of fossil experts, conservators, blacksmiths, and artisans, the company’s Ontario warehouse is abuzz with machinery and bursting with amazing fossils. RCI creates display casts and 3D-printed versions of fossils too fragile to be exhibited; mounts real fossils into dynamic poses; and helps museums pack and ship their ancient, priceless specimens. It may just be the coolest job ever.
As company owner and president Peter Mays explains, RCI has worked on some of the most famous dinosaur reconstructions in recent history, from the Barosaurus in the American Museum of Natural History’s Roosevelt Rotunda to the skeletons featured in Jurassic Park (1993).
Bonus: The website has a store. Looking for a whale skeleton replica? Request a quote.
Header image from YouTube // Great Big Story