 A set of four T. rex postage stamps. (United States Postal Service) That most charismatic of dinosaurs, the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, is about to make first-class mail as fierce as postage art can. At the end of this month, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a new set of Forever stamps featuring the tyrant lizard king. Artwork by paleoartist Julius T. Csotonyi shows the dinosaur as it lived, 66 million years ago, in three stages: as a fluffy infant (upper left), a hunting juvenile (lower right) and a full-grown predator (upper right). The fourth stamp (lower left) displays the dinosaur as you can see its skeleton today at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The model for the juvenile tyrannosaur and the fossils represent a specific specimen, which paleontologists designated MOR 555 — and what the Smithsonian has dubbed the "Nation's T. rex." A rock hound named Kathy Wankel discovered the fossils in Montana in 1988. At the time, fewer than 10 T. rex skeletons had been found. The Nation's T. rex was remarkably intact, containing an estimated 90 percent of the animal's bones. At the newly renovated Smithsonian fossil hall, the T. rex — jaws open as if preparing to chomp — looms over a triceratops skeleton. To paint the dinosaur as it lived, paleoartists such as Csotonyi combine insights from scientific studies and what they see in wildlife. As part of a swell in T. rex research, spurred by technological improvements and a relative abundance of specimens, paleontologists are studying fossilized T. rex scales. Its skin color, though, remains unknown. Csotonyi painted the infant T. rex with striped feathers, and gave the juvenile a white belly below a red-brown back. That pattern, seen also in the markings on a whitetail deer, helps disguise an animal in a forest lit by an overhead sun. "I always think back to when I was visiting a particular aquarium, and there was a fish that was blue, and its lips were blue with pink polka-dots," Csotonyi told The Post in May. "It was real and it looked so ridiculous. It makes me feel okay to come up with an outlandish idea every once in a while, because these things do exist in nature." The U.S. Postal Service will hold a dedication ceremony for the stamps, free and open to the public, at the Smithsonian's natural history museum on Aug. 29. |
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