Tyrannosaurus rex

The "Tooth Draw Deposit" is an extensive, high diversity, multitaxic, dinosaur-rich, bone bed in the latest Cretaceous, Hell Creek Formation. The mapped portions of the deposit show a complex channel lag formed by a combination of both abiotic and biotic processes, at least 40 meters wide and well over 180 meters long. It is composed of interbedded sandstones and conglomerates representing fluvial, riverine deposition, a portion of which shows evidence of hyper-concentrated or debris flow rates. This lag has been sampled in different locations including the main "Tooth Draw Quarry (TD)", "Tooth Draw West (TDW)", "Tooth Draw South (TDS)" and "Becca's Tooth Draw (BTD)". To date, several thousand vertebrate specimens have been recovered over the last 15 years of work. These elements include both dinosaur and non-dinosaur remains, showing a diverse fauna of at least 21 dinosaur and over 48 vertebrate genera. Taphonomic markers indicate that there are at least two distinct communities represented by the deposit. One that represents a more localized fauna, caught up in the initial formation of the lag and another that represents reworked, hydraulically emplaced elements, likely accumulating from further upstream (parautochthonous). Many of the reworked elements show pre-depositional breaks, spiral fractures, bite marks, insect borings, and evidence of sub-aerial exposure. Tyrannosaurid teeth make up over 30% of the logged specimens, over 700 teeth, with more added each year. Dromaeosaurid teeth are also fairly common with over 180 specimens to date. Given the high numbers of shed theropod teeth, and the broken and bite marked bones, the most parsimonious conclusion is that portions of the Tooth Draw assemblage represent the remains of multiple seasons of feeding activity a short distance upstream along the ancient river system.

'Stan', a ~70% complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, recently sold for 31.8 million US dollars to an unknown buyer, pushing up the price of all such skeletons way beyond the budget of most museums. Wealthy private individuals are purchasing such specimens and sometimes putting them on public display but leaving them in an intellectual limbo, unable to be studied and published. However, recently a ~20% complete T. rex skeleton known as 'Titus' was excavated in Montana, shipped to the UK, had casts of Stan's bones added to complete the skeleton, and was mounted and placed on display in the Nottingham Natural History Museum in a temporary exhibition (the first time a mounted T. rex skeleton containing real bones has been on display in England for decades). Importantly, before the mounting process began the real bones were 3D scanned in detail using photogrammetry. The resulting digital 3D models were sent to palaeontologists in America who studied them and produced a palaeopathology paper ready for publication before the mounting process was even complete. All the identifiable bones were 3D printed for display in the exhibition and permanently accessioned into the museum's collection, making physical as well as digital replicas of the bones both accessible and publishable.

Voilà bien une exposition que je ne m’attendais pas à aller voir. Je la croyais même fermée. Jurrasic Park vous a donné des boutons ? Quelques séquelles persistaient aussi chez moi. L’antidote se trouve au Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Allez-y, le remède est efficace.

A ~60-70% complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known as ‘Stan’ recently sold for 31.8 million US dollars to an unknown buyer (announced in  March 2022 as the  Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi), pushing up the price of all such skeletons way beyond the budget of most museums. Wealthy private individuals who purchase expensive fossil specimens sometimes put them on public display but leave them in an intellectual limbo, unable to be studied and published. However, a partial T. rex skeleton known as ‘Titus’ was excavated in Montana in 2018, shipped to the UK in 2020, and had casts of Stan’s bones added to complete the skeleton during mounting. It was loaned to the Nottingham Natural History Museum, Wollaton Hall, as the centrepiece to a temporary exhibition called ‘Titus: T. rex is King’. This was the first time a mounted T. rex skeleton containing fossil bones has been on display in England for many decades. Importantly, before the mounting process began all the real bones were 3D scanned in detail using photogrammetry. The resulting digital 3D models were sent to palaeontologists in America who studied them and produced a paper describing the palaeopathology before the mounting process was even complete. Replicas of all the identifiable bones were 3D printed for display in the exhibition and were accessioned into the museum collections, along with the 3D digital models and all associated data. This ensured that physical as well as digital replicas of the bones would remain accessible, and in theory publishable, forevermore.