Craig Cutler’s passion for dinosaurs roared to life 10 years ago, at a warehouse in New Jersey. Inside, technicians were restoring a Tyrannosaurus rex for a museum exhibit. Cutler, a professional photographer, had been commissioned to document the process—and what he saw transfixed him. Throughout the warehouse, all kinds of ancient, invaluable bones stood frozen mid-assembly like prehistoric actors not quite ready to take the stage. Cutler recalls standing before the disembodied legs of a dinosaur, its fragile bones cradled in a metal rig and affixed with blue tape.

“I thought it was so beautiful,” he says.

Cutler was under the spell of a man named Phil Fraley, a self-described “jack of all trades and master of none” who