Integral Armature

I was in Minneapolis at the weekend and went to the Science Museum (to see the medical quackery exhibit – another story). They had a few dinosaur skeletons on display, all with integral armatures running within the bones. It is quite a common practice but I have rarely seen it done well (one in Vienna comes to mind). The two pictures here – sorry for the poor image quality – show a couple of places where the demands on the steel are greater than the cross sectional depth of the bones, so the steel emerges through the casts of the bones. The confusion between the skeletal and steel structures feels unconvincing to me, but as you know from my posts a few days ago I am prejudiced towards the less bashful armatures.