About Fossil Crates
Who are Fossil Crates?
Fossil Crates is a team of passionate and entrepreneurial paleontologists providing museum-quality fossil replicas beloved by dinosaur-obsessed and those just looking for a unique gift.
What makes your replicas "museum-quality"? Don't museums have real specimens?
The majority of dinosaur bones on display around the world are casts. Casting technology is so good it can be difficult for even experts to determine what is "real" versus what is reproduction. There are many reasons casts are used today:
- 99% of all dinosaurs found are known from only partial skeletons, with roughly 2/3 of all named dinosaurs being known from fragmentary material!. Therefore every dinosaur skeleton on display incorporates cast bones into the mount. Casts used to represent missing bones are often painted such that one can't tell what was originally found. These casts are made by either mirroring existing elements (taking a left and making a right) or modeling the missing pieces from a closely related dinosaur from which they are known.
- Most dinosaurs are known from only a few bones one location. There aren't enough actual bones to be on display! Take Pachycephalosaurus, these thick-headed lizards are popular in museums yet are known from very few bones. In order to meet the demand of museums wanting to showcase this cool dinosaurs casts are used. Casts are an inexpensive way for museums to display rare, neat, and unique specimens. In fact one can argue casts are a better way for museums to display dinosaurs because they are "cleaned up', the broken elements restored, and a better visual presentation is had. Museums often display casts and have a sign that shows which bones are known from fossils and which are casts.
- Often the actual fossil is the only one of its kind. Spinosaurus and Bahariasaurus are examples of dinosaurs whose original bones are no longer with us as both were destroyed in World War II. The National Museum in Brazil recently had a fire that destroyed many scientific specimens. Casts are a way to ensure rare fossils survive for future generations to appreciate. Researchers often use casts because it isn't, for example, inexpensive or convenient to fly to Berlin to look at Archaeopteryx, modern molding and casting techniques allow for most paleontological studies to be conducted on the casts.
- Casts allow members of the public to bring the museum home. Fossil Crates sells products that are on display in museums, now they can be in your home.
The Fossil Crates product replicates the original fossil so well that paleontologists use our casts for research purposes and museums display them to their visitors. Even for trained professionals it can at times be difficult to tell a "real" fossil from a Fossil Crates "fake" one.