Fastened to the wall of the College of Eastern Utah’s Prehistoric Museum, 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 recurved teeth of the dinosaur’s 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 – a techno-phobic