The Royal Mint, the United Kingdom’s coin producer, has introduced a new series of coins featuring the once mighty overlords that ruled the Earth before humans: dinosaurs.
Its new series of collectable 50p coins showcase dinosaur species.
‘Tales of Earth’
The coins have been released in partnership with the United Kingdom’s Natural History Museum.
First coin of this series features the apex predator Tyrannosaurus Rex, a.k.a., T-rex.
This collection is three-part. It has two more coins, one of which will display the Stegosaurus, and a third one will have Diplodocus.
Prices of the coin start at £11 ($13.90), and the most expensive join in this collection is the Gold Proof Coin carrying the price tag of £1,220 ($1541.51). The coins are available for purchase on the Royal Mint website.
The Dinosaurs
This collection, as per Reuters, is the first time the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex has been depicted on a UK fifty pence pieces. It is the only carnivore dinosaur featured in this collection. The other two — Stegosaurus and Diplodocus, are both herbivores.
Paleo-artist Robert Nicholls is behind the design of these coins, which was done in collaboration with the Natural History Museum’s Professor Paul Barrett.
The coin designs, as per the news agency, offer accurate reconstructions of the dinosaurs and their habitats, based on current understanding. To bring the huge creatures to life, some coins will even feature colours.
Design challenges
Talking to Reuters, Nicholls explained that the designs were constructed from the inside-out, focusing on getting their anatomy and proportions right. However, featuring such large creatures on the small 50p coins was a challenge.
“T-rex is a very big animal and trying to make something that big look large on such a small coin is a real challenge. So what I did with T-rex was to make sure we were looking up at the animal so that helps give it a sense if scale, make it look large which is difficult to do on such a small coin,” he said.
“So the unique challenge for the diplodocus coin was fitting an animal so long, with such a long tail and long neck, into essentially a round shape. That was really difficult to overcome. So I managed to do it by using forced perspective and bringing the head towards us and twisting the tail away from us.”
(With inputs from agencies)
