Kronosaurus (Carnegie Collection by Safari Ltd)

We now return to our series of pliosaur reviews. We have already looked in detail at the popular Chap Mei Liopleurodon here and more recently the Kronosaurus by Schleich. Let take a look now at Safari’s offering, another popular figure, the Carnegie Collection Kronosaurus.

Once again, we are not in a very good state of affairs, there are far more problems with the sculpt than there are commendable points. However, Safari may be forgiven for some of the errors they make as their figure is clearly based on a fossil mount now known to be inaccurate, as I will discuss later. But first, lets take the figure at face value. The main body is a perfectly cylindrical tube, more like a miserable fat sausage than a pliosaur body. The distance between the flippers is far too long. The body is also made of a harder plastic than the head – the two materials are quite crudely joined together just in front of the fore flipper and the join is visible.

The head is widely gaping and quite fearsome looking. The nostrils are accurately retracted close to the eyes (nicely sculpted narrow slits as in the Schleich Kronosaurus) but the eyes are way too far back, situated in the temporal fenestrae. This figure is unusual for plesiosaur figures as it is the only one with ears – at the back of the skull there are two small distinct external openings. Whether such a feature would be present in derived aquatic reptiles is unclear. Where the lower jaws meet the upper jaws the cheek extends very far back – this region would have been more muscular.

The dentition suffers from some of the same problems as the Schleich figure – the teeth are all equally sized whereas there should be a lot of variation. Worse, there is an inexplicable gap in the dentition at the very front of the jaws, as if some teeth have fallen out. The tooth rows do not therefore meet up, but form separated rows in each of the jaws, and the snout extends beyond the teeth like: all very un-pliosaur-like. The shape of the lower jaw is very nice though, it is narrow and triangular but expands near the tip forming a spatulate symphysis, a character typical of pliosaurs. Again, there are some nice speculative additions to the mouth – a gullet and a big bulbous tongue are visible in the open mouth.

The spine is perfectly straight, and this figure has a distinct neck, two improvements over the Schleich version. The flippers are incredibly weedy, they look like they might be ripped off in choppy waters. The hind flippers are tiny and impossibly curved backwards. In fact, the hind-flippers in pliosaurs are larger than the fore-flippers and all four limbs had an active role in propulsion. The limbs are possibly the worst and most inaccurate aspect of this figure. In my version the limbs are all horizontal, but in other versions the forelimbs are angled down proppping the animal up a bit. Just liek the Schleich Kronosaurus, the flippers are too thin where they meet the body, there is hardly enough depth for the humerus/femur head, let alone the strong muscles associated with the flippers. The tail tapers to a narrow tip and is just about the right size.

The colour scheme is grey and light grey, the underside is counter-shaded with a pale grey. The eyes are black (no pupils). The figure is 33cm long making it the longest pliosaur replica currently available. is quite a stunning figure, but there are far too many mistakes.

I mentioned near the start of my review that Safari might be forgiven for some of their errors, perhaps they have an excuse? Well in some cases yes, because their reconstruction clearly stems from the most famous skeletal mount of Kronosaurus, the ‘Harvard Specimen’. To cut a long story short, the specimen was badly damaged and much of it had to be reconstructed in plaster, earning the mounted skeleton the nickname of ‘Plasterosaurus’. The number of vertebrae has been overestimated – there are 10 or so vertebrae too many in the backbone – at least Safari can fall back on this to explain their ridiculously long-bodied Kronosaurus toy.

In my next pliosaur review, we will meet the Walking With Dinosaurs Liopleurodon!

This figure is available here for $15

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Parasaurolophus (Carnegie Collection by Safari)

Safari has set out to redo many of the 1988 Carnegie releases. Whereas the new Spinosaurus has no justification at all (they need a new sculpt, period) the new Parasaurolophus comes as a welcome addition and proves to be an interesting variant of the classic Para (maybe because Schleich’s new version is a big improvement). Without a question, this late Cretaceous hadrosaur is recognizable among the non-initiated, so it deserves a good sculpt (Battat’s was exceptional without a doubt, but it still had that strange piece of flesh behind the crest). It’s a good-sized replica (21 cm).

The paint is the first thing I noticed when I compared it to the previous one. The older figures had a shiny kind of paint, but the new lovely paint is more opaque. The blending is also more efficient and complex and believe me, that’s something because there are at least nine shades of colour used on this toy. I found the contrast between the overall dark tone, the yellow spots on the torso and the flaring red on the crest very pleasant.

The anatomy of the new one is infinitely better. The joints seem natural and in the right place (a big problem with the Carnegies) The folds of skin at the juncture between the head and the back are great. What I loved the most is that they made the projections of the vertebrae larger, so that there is a noticeable ridge along the back. They even tried to to portray the irregularity of the neural spines found in a sole specimen of P. walkeri.

Still, the pose is a litte bit awkward, it is odd that it’s not quadrupedal (like most representations) so the result is that kangaroo pose we’ve all come to hate. The head was almost completely remodeled and it looks great (particularly the cheeks and the bill); the hands were redone to some extent, but not enough. It looks as if they didn’t know what to do with them because they look rather ridiculous. The ugly curve of the tail seems as if it would prevent the model from falling.

You can find this beautiful model on (and this review was inspired by) Atomic Elephant, a great online store for your science-related needs.

This figure is available here for $7.95

Picture of the older version of this figure with a yellow crest.