When you drive around the outskirts of Paterson, New Jersey, past windowless taverns with scarred metal doors and warehouses on weed-wild lots, one of the last things you might expect to find is dinosaur fossils. And yet, pull into the driveway of a former foundry, push through the door and into an 11,000-square-foot studio with ceilings higher than the average church, and there they are: the fossil bones of Samson, one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever discovered.
This is the domain of Phil Fraley Productions, a fossil preparation and exhibit fabrication company—a realm of chisels and dust and glue, of long hours and, truth be told, as much art as science. Phil Fraley, 54, has been assembling dinosaur skeletons and preparing exhibits for the nation's top museums for 25 years. He directed a team that built a 40,000-cubic-foot rain forest for the American Museum of Natural History ...
