Clever Girl: Velociraptor Fossil Coin in High Relief From Coin Invest Trust

April 10, 2018

Prehistoric Beasts – Velociraptor mongoliensis

Mongolia. 2000 Togrog. 2018. Silver .999. 3 oz. Red-rock finish. 65 mm. Prooflike. Mintage: 999 pcs. Mint: B. H. Mayer’s Kunstprägeanstalt, Munich.

Description

The obverse shows the coat of arms of the Bank of Mongolia. Below, the inscription 2.000 Togrog in Cyrillic script and in the exergue, the inscription MONGOLIA 3 oz .999 SILVER in Latin script. The reverse presents a fossilised skeleton of a velociraptor; below, the inscription “Velociraptor mongoliensis” in italics, and “Late Cretaceous, Mongolia” in block letters.

Story

Pretty much everybody who loves dinosaurs will remember the role that the Velociraptor mongoliensis played in Jurassic Park. Though, technically speaking, it was the bigger relatives of the velociraptor, members of the species Deinonychus, who were hunting humans in the film. Michael Crichton, the author of the book on which the film was based, decided to name his prehistoric heroes, modelled on the considerably larger Deinonychus, “velociraptors” because it sounded more exciting.

That was a memorable choice, since the name is composed of the word “velox” (= Lat. fast) and “raptor” (= Lat. predator). And Velociraptors were dangerous enemies indeed. Even though, with a length of about two meters (including the tail), a weight of probably 15 kg, and a shoulder height of 0.5 m, they would only have reached up to a modern human’s thigh. Recently discovered evidence proves that they were feathered. Researchers today believe that the velociraptor killed its prey by jumping on its back and ripping out large chunks of meat from the still living animal until it died of shock or blood loss.

Velociraptors lived during the Late Cretaceous, some 75 to 71 million years ago. As, to date, fossils of the species were found in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia only, it is rightly called mongoliensis. The fossil that has preserved an entire velociraptor in a deadly fight with a protoceratops is a national treasure that was only once permitted to leave the country.

For this very special dinosaur, Coin Invest Trust (CIT) has come up with a whole new processing technique and named it “Red Rock Finish”. This processing technique gives the proof-quality coin the rough look of a sandy rock, from which the skeleton rises in an especially high relief thanks to smartminting technology. Due to this additional treatment which takes place after the coin is struck, it receives the quality mark prooflike.