WOW DINOSAURS AND THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE

 

All of science can be divided into physics and stamp-collecting.    Lord Kelvin

I am not a philatelist, a serious stamp collector, but as a kid I collected stamps as a fun hobby (along with coins, minerals, bird feathers,and numerous other objects).  A philatelist is a person like Art Ackley who bought his first stamp album when he was 8 and collected until his death (2019) at 95.  He also sold rocks and minerals at his shop on Stone Street in Colorado Springs for 45 years (see Posting May 24, 2020).  I collected stamps because of their geographic connotation and always had an atlas around to locate countries that produced the stamps—I learned much. In retrospect, I note that many of my stamps came from countries that were colonial in nature and governed by European rulers, for example French Equatorial Africa.  Today these colonies have different names as French Equatorial Africa is now the countries of Chad, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon.  I suppose that rockhounds collecting stamps is not unusual and at one time the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies had a Commemorative Stamp Committee to encourage the publication of mineral-themed stamps by the USPS.

 

 The Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Kraljevina Jugoslavija) was established in 1929 and lasted until World War II when it was replaced by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Socijalistička Federativna Republika Jugoslavija).  The breakup of the Republic started in 2003 and by 2006 Yugoslavia did not exist and was divided into 6 different countries: Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, and Slovenia. I collected these stamps in the1950s.   

 

I had numerous, several pages, of German stamps in my collection.  I suspect they were printed pre1945 since Adolph Hitler is on one stamp (left side, fourth row). 

In 2019 the USPS produced a T.rex (Tyrannosaurus rex) series of four different stamps best sold in panes of 16.  These are beautiful, large, glossy, colored stamps showing different poses of the mighty dinosaur: 1) A face-to-face encounter with a T. rex approaching through a forest clearing; 2) a newly hatched T. rex covered with downy feathers; 3) a juvenile T. rex pursuing a primitive mammal; and 4) young adult T. rex with a young Triceratops. “The Nation’s T. rex,” the young adult depicted on two of the stamps, was discovered on federal land in Montana and is one of the most studied and important specimens ever found. Its remains are now exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamps with original artwork by scientist and paleoartist Julius T. Csotonyi (info from USPS).

The T.rex stamps have a lenticular component on two stamps that simulates motion. Several images are divided into thin, alternating parallel lines and overlaid with a transparent ridged plastic that alters a viewer’s perception of the scene when the stamp is rotated slightly—sort of like a hologram.  One animated stamp stimulates a face-to-face encounter with a charging T. rex. A second stamp shows a young adult and a juvenile Triceratops in both fleshed out and fossil forms.  You really need to buy at least four stamps to observe this neat effect.

The T.rex stamp set is the latest U.S. issue to celebrate prehistoric animals and fossils. The first U.S. issue was the 6¢ Age of Reptiles stamp, part of the 1970 Natural History pane of four (Bald Eagle, African Elephant, Haida Ceremonial Canoe, Apatosaurus in the swamp) issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  The second was the wildly popular 1997 pane of 15 Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaur 32¢ stamps.  Paleoartist James Gurney painted the original dinosaur panoramas for the panes: 1) A scene in Montana, 75 million years ago; and 2) A scene in Colorado, 150 million years ago. My framed pane was a Christmas present 23 years ago. A 33¢ T. rex stamp was issued in 2000 to celebrate the movie Jurassic Park.  And now in 2019, the innovative T.rex pane.  Thank you, United States Postal Service. 

 

Notice the following T.rex stamps on left side and in the middle--there are two different views.  Pane courtesy of the USPS.

I've been standin' here waitin' Ms Postperson

So patiently, for just a card, or just a letter

        As sort of crooned by the Marvelettes