Dinosaur Coins of Laos

Laos isn't the first place you'd think of when it comes to dinosaurs, even though we're working on that, as our relatively recent discovery of the Ichthyovenator, a cousin of Spinosaurus demonstrated, as does the ongoing success of the Dinosaur Museum of Savannakhet. However, as it turns out, in the mid-1990s there was quite a surge in popularity of dinosaurs as seen in the issue of several Lao stamps and particularly the coins.

Here for example is a 1994 Elasmosaurus fighting a Tylosaurus in the waters of prehistoric Earth.

Here we have Lufengosaurus, a plant-eating dinosaur who was also featured on a kip coin in 1994.

The Sauroctonus is a toothsome creature of the ancient past, and Laos is presently the only nation I know of to feature one on its currency. The same can be said for the 1995 Megalosaurus.

And of course, there's hardly a point to having a series of dinosaur coins if you don't include a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I'm still working on assembling my complete collection, but hopefully this post will help build an interest in more of these older coins and encourage Laos to do another series by the 2020s. Which dinosaurs would you like to see featured on coins in the future?