The sky is popping white and the winds are choosing up, which implies it can quickly start to snow once more. Suluk is aware of this, and he or she additionally is aware of that she should return to her chicks quickly, however the acquainted scent she picked up whereas out searching is getting stronger. It’s the unmistakable scent of one thing useless. And there, up forward, lies one thing partially coated by snow. Too small for an ornithomimosaur, not the appropriate form for a pachyrhinosaur. A hadrosaur, maybe? Suluk attracts nearer after which realizes that the icy kind is one in all her personal. Certainly, it’s none aside from the crippled intruder that she and her mate chased out of the territory some days in the past. Clearly, he didn’t survive the final snowstorm.
Not a second to lose; Suluk will get proper all the way down to work. The corpse is frozen strong to the purpose the place even her highly effective tooth and jaws can be put to the take a look at. She gnaws and gnashes till eventually, she severs one of many hind legs. Then she begins to trudge again dwelling, dragging the heavy frozen load in her mouth. That snow will start falling any second . . .
Due to its outstanding appearances in AppleTV’s Prehistoric Planet little question, Nanuqsaurus is changing into one of many extra common tyrannosaurs after the king tyrant itself. Final 12 months, I reviewed the toy of it by CollectA; now right here we have now the Wild Safari one from Safari Ltd. I’ve chosen to interpret mine as a feminine by the title of Suluk, which merely means “feather” in Inuit.
Suluk is sculpted in an uncommon pose: hunched over together with her proper hand foreclaws simply millimetres off the bottom and her backbone and head turning to the left, with mouth extensive open. Her left foot is prolonged ahead whereas the appropriate one is prolonged again and her tail is raised excessive with the tip swaying to the appropriate. It’s a cool and weird pose. It seems as if Suluk is on the assault, snapping on the flanks of a ceratopsian or a hadrosaur, and even trying to pull a smaller animal out of its burrow. Alternatively, she may very well be crouching down like this with a purpose to sign her willingness to mate, identical to many a contemporary feminine fowl will do.
Suluk measures barely greater than 23 cm lengthy and 9.5 cm excessive on the arch in her tail, making her a lot greater than her CollectA counterpart and corresponding to the Safari Albertosaurus. Which is becoming given {that a} mature grownup Nanuqsaurus is assumed to been about the identical measurement as its southern relative.
Suluk’s most important color is a really pale porcelain blue, quite like recent snow within the early night. A streak of darkish brown runs from the again of her head to the tip of her tail, with stripes coming down on the perimeters. Darkish blue-grey is used for her muzzle, arms, and ft. Her eyes are brilliant blue, her mouth is mild pink, her tooth are mild beige, and her hind claws are black. Oddly, her tiny foreclaws are unpainted, though that is probably a manufacturing unit error. Except for that, I believe it’s a quite cool color scheme, no pun supposed. Becoming for an animal that lived up close to the chilly prime of the globe.
Whether or not or not tyrannosaurids actually did have feathers wherever on their our bodies stays a subject of debate, however Suluk follows within the footsteps of her CollectA predecessor and the Prehistoric Planet depiction by being nearly completely coated in a shaggy coat of feathers. The one elements of her which have scales are her ft, her arms, her muzzle, and the area comprising her orbits and forehead. Her arms and ft have the same old rows of scutes and pitted pores and skin, together with on the soles. The scales on her head are pretty massive and considerably faint.
Suluk’s feathers have a thick and shaggy look to them, quite just like the fur on a polar bear or an Arctic wolf. As together with her scales, they do look good, no query, however they’re simply not as nicely outlined as on the Safari toys sculpted by Doug Watson. The identical goes for the sculpting inside her mouth. Her tooth are pointy sufficient, however her tongue and her palate are clean.
Which brings us to the accuracy issue. As I famous in my CollectA assessment, Nanuqsaurus is simply recognized from fragmentary bits of cranium on the time of this writing. However, it was undoubtedly a tyrannosaurine, and Suluk undoubtedly seems like one. However I’ll word that her decrease jaw seems to be too extensive. Furthermore, she sadly has totally uncovered tooth when it’s nearly sure that tyrannosaurs and different theropods had lips. As for all of the feathers, nicely, I say that if the paleontologists who labored on Prehistoric Planet are okay with Nanuqsaurus being this feathery, then I’m completely okay with Suluk being that manner too.
And the way, you could ask, does Suluk stack up towards her CollectA predecessor? Nicely, she has measurement and presence going for her, and he or she scales significantly better with different tyrannosaur toys across the 1:35 scale. However in relation to sculpting element, the CollectA model is the clear victor, as each its feathery and scaly bits are objectively higher outlined than Suluk’s.
Total, the Nanuqsaurus isn’t the easiest toy in Safari’s 2025 prehistoric assortment, however I’d say that it’s nonetheless a reasonably strong and distinctive one which must be pleasing to collectors of all ages.
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