THE CASTING PROGRAM OF THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Since 1931 casts have been made of specimens from the Vertebrate Paleontology collection of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH). Peter A. Bungart, Collector and Preparator from 1923 to 1946 of the museum's Geology Department (the predecessor of the Vertebrate Paleontology Department) made plaster casts of various specimens. He sculpted in clay the missing plates of the arthrodire Dunkleosteus terrelli (CMNH 5768) that he had collected from the Late Devonian (Famennian) Cleveland Shale in 1926 from a cone-in-cone lens and made plaster casts of these and the other cranial, thoracic and ventral plates to use in a three-dimensional mount which since 1938 has been on exhibit in the museum's Kirtland Hall. In 1954 the first molds of this specimen were made by the Cleveland, Ohio firm of Fischer and Jirouche in the museum's basement. Casts of CMNH 5768 are in museums around the world.

From Bungart's original work in clay and plaster the casting activities at the museum have evolved to include the most modern materials and complex molds. The current program involves the use of platinum silicone rubbers, epoxies, polyurethanes and foams. Single and multi-part molds have been made which show detail down to the level of second hand fingerprints in plaster repair work. Casts are now produced which represent the depth and diversity of the departments' collection.

Other casts currently available from the CMNH are: since 2002 the complete three-dimensional crossopterygian, Eusthenopteron foordi (CMNH 8158) from the Middle Devonian (Frasnian) Escuminac Formation of Miguasha, Quebec, Canada, on exhibit since 1973 and at the Miguasha Provincial Park and the Age of Fishes Museum, Australia; the inferognathals (lower jaws) from 13 Cleveland Shale arthrodire specimens; a Cleveland Shale shark, Cladoselache, collected in 1926 by Bungart from a Big Creek concretion, showing its dermal outline, gill arches and muscle fibers (CMNH 5371); available since 1988, the holotype skull of the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Hell Creek Formation tyrannosaur Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541), collected by David H. Dunkle in 1942 and on exhibit in Kirtland Hall-casts are also at the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Black Hills Institute, SD and; a 9.25 inch long Pleistocene Smileodon fang (CMNH 11884) from the La Brea, California tar pits and a 6.9 inch long Holocene Carcharocles shark "megatooth".