”Tiantaiosaurus/Tiantaisaurus sifengensis“ is the informal name of an undescribed Early Cretaceous therizinosaur from the Laijia or Liangtoutang Formation of Zhejiang Province, China. Discovered in 2005, the specimen is said to consist of an ischium, an incomplete pubis and ilium, a femur, a tibia, a talus, and a good many vertebrae from across the body. Not a large amount of fossil material, but it’s actually pretty much par for the course for a therizinosaur. A skeletal restoration was put on public display at some location in China, and apparently an entire manuscript describing the remains was written in 2007, but it was never published for some reason. Pity.
Another pity is the demise of the company Vitae. Just why they went bust has never been officially stated on record (as far as I am aware), but you can read about the rumours for yourself here and here. And today we shall be examining another one of the relatively few toys that they released during their lifespan: Tiantaiosaurus (that’s the name they went with). Two versions exist, A and B, the former of which you see here. I came across it online earlier this year, for what struck me as a pretty good price. It did not include the base shown in the previous links, but that’s just as well. They take up too much shelf space anyway.
At slightly more than 10.5 cm tall and 21 cm long, this is the largest of the five Vitae toys I now own. As no formal description of Tiantaiosaurus currently exists, we can’t say how big it was, but the official scale given is 1:35, so I’m going with that. The toy is sculpted in a walking stance with its head raised high and looking to the left. The right arm is bent, the left arm is dangling, the left leg is stepping forward, the right leg is extended back, and the tail is angled downward with the tip swaying to the right. Unfortunately, mine does not stand well at all, thus necessitating the support rod from the PNSO Lythronax.
The main colours here are sandy yellow and light brown. Medium brown, dark brown, and black are used for the various markings on the body, from the large patch on the back to the patterns on the wings to the stripes on the tail. The claws are milk chocolate brown and the underbelly is very light pink mottled with white, rather like the hide of a domestic pig. The head features brown eyes and a bold white patch running down the snout and covering the entire beak. The nostrils have not been painted, which gives the head something of an unfinished appearance.
Except for its the insides of its arms and hands, its belly, and its feet, this Tiantaiosaurus is covered in feathers from the head to the tail. But unlike the decidedly shaggy Therizinosaurus toys from CollectA and Safari Ltd., the plumage is very short and sleek. The only truly long feathers are the ones that make up the wings on the arms. They appear to have been sculpted with ostrich wings in mind, as they have long feathers on the outside, but bare, scaly skin on the inside. The foreclaws are long and rather like talons. On the whole then, the arms look very good, except that there are visible seams where they connect to the torso.
The legs are long and muscular and the feet are more like standard theropod ones than the more derived tootsies on Therizinosaurus, complete with curved claws. But unlike with most theropod toys, these feet do not feature rows of scutes. The tail is relatively short, but otherwise unremarkable. A small tuft or fan at the tip might have been a cool touch.
In keeping with all that we presently know about therizinosaurs, this Tiantaiosaurus has been restored with a long, goose-like neck and a small, narrow skull with a beak at the end for nipping plants as opposed to ripping prey. It’s speculative at the moment, of course, but there’s no reason to think that the head looked radically different. Aside from the aforementioned unpainted nostrils, it looks quite good.
Overall, I find the Vitae Tiantaiosaurus to be a solid toy, albeit not quite on the same quality level as the current products from CollectA, Haolonggood, PNSO, and Safari. The inability to stand on its known is the only truly irksome thing about it, and that could just be a case of bad luck. And other than Therizinosaurus itself, therizinosaurs remain sorely underrepresented in the world of prehistoric toys, so I reckon this one ought to be welcome in anybody’s collection. Again, it’s a real pity that Vitae went under, especially considering that they were planning to release an array of cool-looking toys, including Achelousaurus, Charonosaurus, Eotriceratops, Shunosaurus, Suchomimus, and several relatively obscure Asian marine reptiles. What would have been.
And naturally, it is hoped that a formal description of Tiantaiosaurus/Tiantaisaurus (or whatever this therizinosaur ends up being called) gets published in the future.
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