Tamiya 1/35 Chasmosaurus

Everyone loves dinosaurs, right?  I decided to build one of the dino kits in my stash.  Some of these Tamiya dino kits are very accurate and have great detail.  This is one of them.  The momma chasmosaur and her baby are finely detailed and the kit came with a nice diorama.  

Chasmosaurus was a ceratopsian (“horned faced”) dinosaur related to Triceratops that grazed the North American continent in the late Cretaceous, about 77 million years ago.   There is evidence that the adults cared for their young, so this depiction is based in part on scientific fact.  The original fossil specimen was found at Berry Creek, Alberta in 1898.   

Assembling the dino is simple. There are a couple of options for the leg positions.  

As you can see, there ARE seams that have to be filled.  Unlike aircraft, animals don’t have joints and panel lines.  They have to look natural.

Of course we don’t know what colors the dinosaurs were.  It was likely that some of the therapod dinos like Velociraptor might have had bright coloration due to their close relationship to modern birds.  Chasmosaurs, belonging to a very different group of dinos, might have been dull in color.  I took the liberty of making these guys have some color on their frills.

Decided to put the tree upright (it could also have been done as a stump lying on the ground).  Once again, it needed some filling and sanding.  Looking at the diorama terrain, I thought it might benefit from some “augmentation”.

I took some Gorilla Spray On glue and sprinked some fine gravel from our driveway onto the dino pathway.  

Got started on the included figure and tortoise and lizard.  

Dino safari, anyone?

Here are some shots of the finished diorama.

Tamiya Acrylic Paint

X-1 Black
X-7 Red
XF-2 Flat White
XF-3 Flat Yellow
XF-15 Flat Flesh
XF-18 Medium Blue
XF-24 Dark Grey
XF-26 Deep Green
XF-52 Flat Earth
XF-64 Red Brown
XF-66 Light Grey
XF-67 NATO Green
XF-71 Cockpit Green