Oloroceratops: An Animatronic Dinosaur Meme

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As readers of this blog should know all too well, palaeoart is a field where copying other people’s work is commonplace. This is especially true if a nonexpert artist has been commissioned to cook something up on the cheap. How many books have been reviewed here whose artwork can be traced back to the old greats? How many lesser artists have we seen who’ve copied the work of originals like Charles Knight, Zdeněk Burian, Robert Bakker, Greg Paul or John Sibbick?

So when everyone is copying everyone else, you get palaeoart memes. Infamous cases include the Mohawk Syntarsus, the Freaky Giraffoid Barosaurus and, often spotted in our own archives, the Gangly Dork Parasaurolophus. The fact that we mostly cover Vintage Dinosaur Art means we mostly see Vintage Dinosaur Memes, but that doesn’t mean new palaeoart memes, unique to the 21st century, aren’t springing up under our noses as we speak.

Which brings me to my favourite smalltown dinosaur park, where I recently had to do a double take seeing the new addition…

SKREEEEEONK

Believe it or not, this is supposed to be Olorotitan, that charismatic Russian lambeosaurine hadrosaur with the uniquely hatchet-shaped headcrest. You know. The crest that is laterally flat, and certainly doesn’t look like the head frill of a ceratopsian.

So what’s up with that animatronic up there? How did we get a hadrosaur with a ceratopsian head frill? How many people think this fanciful creature is, in fact, what Olorotitan looked like? Do we now live in a world where pop culture believes Olorotitan to be some sort of bizarre ceatopsian/hadrosaur chimaera? Is this our new normal?

Note the bumpy ornaments and oddly-shaped fenestrae, not corresponding to any ceratopsian I know of.

A round on Google reveals that this, indeed, seems to be the case! All those drawings and paintings of Olorotitan look fine, but all pictures of animatronic Olorotitan, be they for sale or already standing at a dinosaur park, are all variations on the head frill theme. You know what that means: It’s A Meme Now. Alas, we are too late! Many kids will go home now, believing there lived, at one point, an ornithopod with ceratopsian headgear. So how did we get here?

Olorotitan by Dmitry Bogdanov, from Wikimedia Commons

The fact that they all broadly share the same colour scheme is a definite clue. It is obviously the colour scheme used by Dmitry Bogdanov, a Russian palaeoartist who has illustrated countless dinosaurs andotherprehistoricanimals for Wikipedia. One builder must have based their model on Bogdanov’s reconstruction, while all the others based theirs off off each other’s.

Obvious Bogdanov ripoff is obvious. Speaking of ripoffs: I have found this image on the websites of Kawah, Gengu and Amodinosaur, all competing Chinese robot firms. Goodness knows who actually made it.

I wouldn’t know where to begin if I were to try to trace back where this meme originated; I don’t understand Mandarin for one thing. But I imagine it must have gone something like this:

Imagine you’re an engineer at a Chinese robotics firm. You don’t know much about dinosaurs, but you have spent quite some time making hackneyed T. rex, Triceratops and Parasaurolophus models. Your dinosaurs may not be very scientifically informed, but they are crowd-pleasing enough for you to make a living. One day, someone commissions you to make a model of Olorotitan. It’s quite the new thing, that Olorotitan! You’ve never heard of Olorotitan, and being Chinese your access to Google is somewhat limited. So you take to Wikipedia, one of the few sources available to you (though read on). You nab the first image you see as your reference and immediately get to work. In lateral view, it’s fairly ambiguous what the animal’s headgear should look like in 3D, but you’ve made dozens of Triceratops, Protoceratops and Styracosaurus in your time. Surely it’ll look something like that, right?

If I had to guess, this might be the first one, as it follows the Bogdanov reconstruction very closely. Image taken from Amodinosaur, but they probably stole it – their own Olororian is WAY uglier.

And so the first robotic Olorotitan arrives on the scene. Other firms see it. And, because the robot dinosaur industry is a ruthless, cutthroat business (one assumes), they will unscrupulously put op pictures of your dinosaur on their website. This is of course to make it seem like they’ve broadened their repertoire; they don’t want to fall behind! They will then be commissioned one and will scramble to bootleg their own version of it. It’s a copy of the previous one, only ever so slightly different. A meme is born.

In an environment like this, there is no incentive to do any research of your own, but every incentive to copy your rivals and to do so quickly. It’s extremely fertile ground for memes and myths to proliferate. Next thing you know, there’s Olorotitans in kitschy dinosaur parks all over the world. Olorotitans with Triceratops’ headgear. Kids see it and think that’s what the real thing looks like. Thanks to the efforts of cheap Chinese robotics, we can now add the Robot Olorotitan With Ceratopsian Head Frill Meme to the list of Palaeoart Memes. If anyone has a catchier title for it, I’d love to hear it. Oloroceratops?

The Olorotitan made by Kawah. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Many palaeoartists – not least our own David Orr – are calling for a push away from simple, lateral reconstructions of dinosaurs. There is a place for such businesslike, schematic views of extinct animals as reference material – Scott Hartman’s work is the obvious example – but we see now how a lateral piece of paleoart can be completely misinterpreted as it is brought into the third dimension. I’d argue here for more depth (both literally and figuratively) in paleoart on Wikipedia, but seeing as how Wikipedia has been blocked in China as of 2019 the point is moot. Don’t expect the mean quality of Chinese robot dinosaurs to improve anytime soon.

I found the ugliest one! This one seems to be from Amodinosaur. Forget the Triceratops frill; this hideousness doesn’t resemble anything anymore.

So, as the Oloroceratops now joins the ranks of Freaky Barosaurs, Mohawk Syntarsus and Dorky Parasaurolophus, the best thing we can do is have some fun with this. Spot an Oloroceratops in the wild? Let us know!

(This is an expanded version of a post that appeared earlier this year on my Nielsaurus blog)

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9 Comments

  • Reply
    Mustafa M.
    November 8, 2019 at 11:41 am

    I once saw this at my local amusement park, and at the Granby Zoo. Disgu

    • Reply
      Mustafa M.
      November 8, 2019 at 11:45 am

      Meant to say disgusting up there, just for the record.

      • Reply
        Niels Hazeborg
        November 10, 2019 at 7:17 pm

        It’s conquering the world!!! Granby Zoo, that would be Canada? And what is your local amusement park, if I may ask? You wouldn’t happen to have any pics, would you?

        • Reply
          Mustafa Ahmed
          November 13, 2019 at 4:07 pm

          1. Yes.
          2. Canada’s Wonderland, as one of Cedar Fair’s dime-a-dozen Dinosaurs Alive attractions. Thankfully, they\re starting to close down.
          3. I don’t. Youcan see the former on Google Maps though.

          • Niels Hazeborg
            November 13, 2019 at 4:38 pm

            Bless, I’ve found it on maps! It’s identical to the second picture, probably the very same. Took a screenshot for posterity, because… why not.

  • Reply
    Colin
    November 8, 2019 at 2:41 pm

    Damn funny

  • Reply
    Fafnirx
    November 8, 2019 at 10:24 pm

    This meme reminds me of the winged stegosaur “Yingshanosaurus”.

    • Reply
      Niels Hazeborg
      November 10, 2019 at 7:19 pm

      Wow, never heard of that one! Is that similar because people misinterpret lateral reconstructions too?

  • Reply
    plushboyq
    August 25, 2020 at 9:26 am

    Saw one at jurassic quest in Cincinnati ohio

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