ANew T. rex with A New Attitude
by Kathryn M. Duda
For half a century its towered over visitors in the
Hall of Dinosaurs at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, rearing up on
immense hind legs and filling young and old with awe and a little fear.
Once youve stood in its shadow, you dont question the existence of dinosaurs,
or the extent of their size, or their potential ferocity. But around the
country, natural history museumsincluding the Carnegieare rethinking
the way theyve been displaying T. rex all these decades, and many have
repositioned their specimens into a more horizontal stance.
“This new posture doesnt mean museums were wrong all these years about
T. rex,” says Mary Dawson, curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie
Museum of Natural History, in reference to the previously accepted vertical
posture. “Paleontologists have simply begun looking at T.rex more as a
living, moving animal than as a static museum trophy.” Indeed, the horizontal
posture reflects what scientists now see as T. rexs likely locomotive
posture, but Dawson says the animal could very well have assumed the older,
vertical position when at rest.
A new cast of T. rex, in the active, horizontal stance, was assembled
over the summer by museum staff in the Hall of Sculpture, and it will remain
on display through January 4 as part of the exhibit The Age of Dinosaurs
Lives On. Museum visitors were able to watch as the new T. rex took
shape over two months, vertebrae by vertebrae and rib by rib.
The specimen was purchased by the museum from Research Casting International,
which cast it from an original T. rex at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman,
Montana.Norman Wuerthele, manager of the museums preparation laboratory,
and preparator Richard Kissell, assembled the specimen and positioned it
according to the latest scientific information.
“Even though the cast came with the legs and pelvis already put together,
assembling it was more difficult than we expected,” says Wuerthele. Without
a blueprint, he and Kissell had to determine the order of the specimens
bones, and also cut and shape the ribs. “And we built it knowing that wed
eventually have to dismantle it,” Wuerthele continues, “so we used screws
to attach most of the bones, instead of epoxy glue.”
Among the hundreds of curious onlookers who witnessed the assembly of
the T. rex cast was welder Kent Frazee. Returning with his own special
equipment, he bent and cut the steel framework onto which the specimens
arms were then attached, and saved the museum staff time and money that
would have been spent hiring a contractor to do the job. Frazee has a special
connection to T. rex at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, for he was
once employed by Anderson Welding, the company that did the welding on
the museums original T. rex in the 1940s. He says that a photograph of
that specimen hangs on the wall at Anderson headquarters.
That original T. rex, on exhibit in the museums Dinosaur Hall, will
be remounted in an active, horizontal position as well, when the hall is
renovated over the next few years. The two T. rex specimens will then be
exhibited sparing with each other in a lifelike situation.
The museums older T. rex is the type specimenthe individual on which
the original scientific description of T.rex was based, and to which all
others of its kind must be compared. In other words, the Carnegies T.rex
is the official T. rex, which makes it all the more important for Carnegie
Museum of Natural History to do right by the animal and show it in a posture
that reflects its lifestyle, and the latest scientific thinking.
Kathryn M. Duda is associate editor of Carnegie Magazine.
