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Friday, November 24, 2000
Touchable Dinos
By Fritz Thompson
Journal Staff Writer
Tucumcari in times past was next door to the hideout of badman Black Jack Ketchum and a popular stopoff on Route 66, but nowadays it can boast of a new attraction. This one deals in bronze and old bones.
Click to enlarge
The 10,000 square-foot Mesalands Dinosaur Museum opened in May and reflects the rich prehistoric fossil record found in the surrounding New Mexico mesa country.
Skeletons of some of the scariest dinosaurs in the world now stalk the exhibit halls of the downtown museum, which is part of Mesa Technical College. It is the only such museum in the nation that is affiliated with a junior college.
The museum has the world's largest collection of bronze skeletons and fossils of prehistoric animals. The bronzes were created at the college's foundry in the fine arts/bronze department.
Doing bone replicas in bronze involves making a cast in latex, filling it with wax, removing the latex, coating the wax with a ceramic, melting the wax and filling the cavity with bronze.
The centerpiece of the museum is the world's only complete skeleton of a torvosaurus, a rare, meat-eating dinosaur similar to tyrannosaurus rex that may be found in eastern New Mexico.
The museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays except holidays. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2.50 for children. Further information is available at (505) 461-3466.
