Fastened to the wall of the College of Eastern Utah’s Prehistoric Museum in Price, there’s an Allosaurus doing an excellent Gene Simmons impression. The bust was created by David A. Thomas – perhaps best known for his Albertosaurus and Pentaceratops mounts at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History – and he gave the Jurassic predator a frozen rictus in which a forked tongue flails over the imposing teeth arrayed in the lower jaw.

All I could think of when I saw the sculpture was “I sure hope that Allosaurus doesn’t bite its tongue!” That’s probably because of Michael Crichton. In his novel Jurassic Park –