The first time I visited “Dinosaur Park,” in the Black Hills of Rapid City, SD (summer, 1955), the full-scale Protoceratops statue was still under construction (see photo, below, which I took that year during a vacation with my Mom). To promote the upcoming new addition to the concrete menagerie the park’s gift shop issued a small plaster Protoceratops model created by Emmet A. Sullivan, a local sculptor who had made all of the park’s full-sized dinosaur figures. At that same time the gift shop began selling black and white postcards of the commercially sold Protoceratops model, although painted and placed in a miniature prehistoric setting. Eventually, of course, there would be color postcards (see below) showing the completed live-sized statue.
Sullivan based his Protoceratops on the mural by Charles R. Knight on display at Chicago’s Field Museum, as reproduced on this souvenir postcard.
