I won a keichousaurus at an online auction, is it real?

[DawnOfADream]

7 minutes ago, Huntonia said:

Hmm, that would certainly be odd. I can't think of any reason to coat a genuine fossil in a plaster like that, the fact that the seller won't acknowledge it is a bad sign as well. I would suggest heating a pin over a flame and touching it to the bone. If nothing happens it's a fossil, if the pin melts through it it's fake. My best guess would be that artificial bones were made of some sort of plastic and then some type of adhesive or solvent, what you call plaster, was used to attach the psuedo-fossil to real matrix and the excess serves to shroud the 'bones' to help hide their lack of authenticity. 

@Huntonia

Thanks for that, I'll give that a try tonight after work and report back!

[snolly50]

As @Huntonia indicates, heated needle is a great suggestion. Are you certain it is plaster and not a mineral deposit?

 

Edit: Try viewing the piece with as as much magnification as you can marshal. 

[DawnOfADream]

1 minute ago, snolly50 said:

As @Huntonia indicates, heated needle is a great suggestion. Are you certain it is plaster and not a mineral deposit?

@snolly50

Yep, fairly certain. It had a distinct smell of plaster as I took it from the packaging, as well as texture.

[snolly50]

1 minute ago, DawnOfADream said:

distinct smell of plaster

Yikes! I can't think of a good reason for that, unless it was jacketed in the field. Which I would think odd for a slab collected piece.

[FrozenFlame]

Yeah, I can't think of any reason why would put plaster over it. Definitely do the pin test to see if it's bone you got. 

 

Hope it's just weird coloured matrix, but this is just baffling. I've seen Keichousaurus getting painted bones and whatnot, but I can't think of a reason why they'd fake the whole thing the way they've done here. Just weird. 

[Ptychodus04]

Any chance we can get a high resolution picture of this spot?

 

There’s never a good reason to cover a genuine fossil with fake “matrix”. You can also look at it under a black light. Some fossils fluoresce but most only in parts. If the whole “bone” lights up, that’s another marker for a forgery.

 

[Randyw]

I’m seriously concerned. Looking at the close ups there’s no individual vertebrae and the paddle looks wrong. Why isn’t there individual bones.?

[DawnOfADream]

15 hours ago, Ptychodus04 said:

Any chance we can get a high resolution picture of this spot?

 

There’s never a good reason to cover a genuine fossil with fake “matrix”. You can also look at it under a black light. Some fossils fluoresce but most only in parts. If the whole “bone” lights up, that’s another marker for a forgery.

 

@Ptychodus04

I'll take a picture of it with my partner phone when I get home tonight. Unfortunately my camera is pretty shabby

[DawnOfADream]

Well in some good news, I tried the heated pin method as recommended by @Huntonia and @FrozenFlame. I tried it on multiple areas of the specimen, and it didn't melt or distort, thankfully! 

Here's a slightly better photo of the spot as desired by @Ptychodus04.

I think I'll soak a cloth in a mix of warm water and a tiny amount of vinegar and apply it to the top of the specimen, and try to brush away the plaster.

[Ptychodus04]

It is still pretty hard to tell what you have going on from the photos. This is usually the case. It looks like you have actual bone under a hard coating of matrix that is under the applied “matrix”. I still don’t see what they were trying to accomplish here though.

 

Test a spot on the piece with vinegar to see if it reacts.

[Fossildude19]

This still looks rather fake, to me.

Humerus bones look wrong - no slight curve, too short.

Neck bones look weird. 

Skull has no projections toward the rear. 

Hip area looks strange. 

Femurs look too short. 

11 ribs versus 13.

Caudal vertebrae are downwards pointing, rather than straight or upward pointing. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JarrodB]

Sorry but I think it's a fake. 

[snolly50]

This is an intriguing mystery that goes beyond "real or fake;" especially if the piece is eventually show to be fabricated. It would then involve motive and human intent. The question in my mind is "why? Why would a forger go to all the trouble of constructing a 3D facsimile and then bury it in ersatz matrix? The piece as it was purchased did not look attractive, thereby increasing its chances for a sale. The fossil is a common one, so the return on a forger's effort would be small. Why not put the work into something more lucrative? Then we currently have the piece of evidence that the bone is not of the heat reactive material expected in a constructed piece. Does that mean the artisan took real bone and built a Frankenkeich? Unlikely. Curiouser and curiouser.

[Fossildude19]

 

1 hour ago, snolly50 said:

This is an intriguing mystery that goes beyond "real or fake;" especially if the piece is eventually show to be fabricated. It would then involve motive and human intent. The question in my mind is "why? Why would a forger go to all the trouble of constructing a 3D facsimile and then bury it in ersatz matrix? The piece as it was purchased did not look attractive, thereby increasing its chances for a sale. The fossil is a common one, so the return on a forger's effort would be small. Why not put the work into something more lucrative? Then we currently have the piece of evidence that the bone is not of the heat reactive material expected in a constructed piece. Does that mean the artisan took real bone and built a Frankenkeich? Unlikely. Curiouser and curiouser.

 

Why make these forgeries for sale? 

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Why? Look no further than the money made. 

Most of these appear to be carved. That must take some time, no?

But at $50.00 a pop to start, with 8-10 dollars shipping, you can get some hard work out of some artisans for something that may sell. 

Supply and Demand.  

 

Easier to get around the export restrictions as well, if they aren't real.   

Anything can be produced in quantity, with an assembly line work system.

 

[snolly50]

12 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

Why? Look no further than the money made. 

Yes, $ are the answers to many questions. But what intrigues me about the piece in question is, why that approach and not the tried and true fake methods so well illustrated above? I would think that the fakes above would be much more likely to be purchased by the uninformed than the obscured piece in discussion. Of course, in Human endeavors sometimes the activity makes little practical sense to anyone beyond the doer.

 

The point about skirting export rules is well taken. However real Keich are so common that in their case it must not be too great an impediment.

[Fossildude19]

This item reminds me of this cast I posted a few years ago.

 

 

 

I also noticed that most of the Keichousaurs are on completely squared off slabs. 

So perhaps the OP's Keichousaurus is similarly a cast with the plaster covering matrix. 

[snolly50]

@Fossildude19 Tim, your last post reminded me of Stephen J Gould's The Lying Stones of Marrakech, a great read from a good while back.

[DawnOfADream]

So last night I used a warm towel to give it a soak, and then scrubbed and brushed away most of the plaster.

Here are the results. The first pic shows work using some sort of glues, as well as a very damning hole that was exposed just below the neck. The second image shows the full 'specimen'. It's not looking good at all

 

The aforementioned exposed hole in the top image. Dark coloured glues (?) on the top and bottom left images. A different glue has been used on the tail.

 

Full 'specimen'.

[snolly50]

Yikes!  I hypothesize that it was a fabricated piece assigned to a new apprentice. When his efforts were revealed, so the project would not be a loss; they decided to coat it with artificial matrix to ...well...cover it up.

[FrozenFlame]

6 hours ago, Fossildude19 said:

Why make these forgeries for sale? 

 

            

Why? Look no further than the money made. 

Most of these appear to be carved. That must take some time, no?

But at $50.00 a pop to start, with 8-10 dollars shipping, you can get some hard work out of some artisans for something that may sell. 

Supply and Demand.  

 

Easier to get around the export restrictions as well, if they aren't real.   

Anything can be produced in quantity, with an assembly line work system.

 

I've seen the first lot listed many a time on our favourite auction site, and I still don't know why people buy it when it is so obviously fake. But they buy it, and with quite frequent regularity. 

 

This situation is downright baffling. It's looking more like it's fabricated, but the thing is, it's one of the weirdest fakes I've ever seen. It's not faked as if it was the perfect specimen, the matrix is definitely abnormal, this is just a very strange situation.

[Crazyhen]

I guess this specimen is made in such a way that it resembles those "dig your own fossil" toy (with plastic bones embedded in plaster, so that kids can dig out the dinosaur bones themselves).  A fabricated fossil embedded in plaster so that it looks more raw and genuine.  But as Tim pointed out, the anatomy of the specimen does not fit that of a genuine Keichousaurus.

 

And as to why these were made, well, I know there are many local artisans who could make fake fossils without much efforts, they would earn some money even if the fake fossils are selling at a low price.

[DawnOfADream]

4 minutes ago, Crazyhen said:

it resembles those "dig your own fossil" toy (with plastic bones embedded in plaster, so that kids can dig out the dinosaur bones themselves). 

@Crazyhen

Hahaha I must admit it was a lot of fun digging it out of the plaster, digging out my fake and dodgy treasure

[snolly50]

34 minutes ago, DawnOfADream said:

it was a lot of fun

Have you discovered what material the "bone" is comprised of. I recall it was not melted by the hot needle.

[Huntonia]

6 hours ago, snolly50 said:

Have you discovered what material the "bone" is comprised of. I recall it was not melted by the hot needle.

Indeed, it must not be a plastic like I would have expected. I do believe that fossil forgers try to use materials that can pass the hot needle test. I've heard of them being made of concrete or even a kind of ceramic. Carved fakes can also pass for real when heat is the only test but this appears to have a seam around it indicating it was adhered to the matrix, not carved out of it. I'm not quite sure what to think.

[DawnOfADream]

On 25/02/2020 at 11:31 AM, snolly50 said:

Have you discovered what material the "bone" is comprised of. I recall it was not melted by the hot needle.

@snolly50

I've got no idea, sorry. I'd have to guess some sort of resin or metallic composite material due to the the little dots around the specimen. Based upon the dots I hypothesis that it was made from a material that was greatly heated and cast before being put in place. An example of the aforementioned dots