Yahoo News Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton pieced together for exhibition
A 39ft-long Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton which weighs the same as four Mini Cooper cars is being pieced together in Glasgow after arriving for the latest stop of its European tour.
Trix the T-rex is being housed in a bespoke, climate-controlled 600 square metre pavilion at the city’s Kelvin Hall.
It will be on display to the public from April 18 until July 31 in an interactive exhibition which also includes a painted reconstruction of the 5,000kg dinosaur.
The T.rex in Town tour started in September 2016 and has also visited Salzburg, Barcelona, Paris and Lisbon while waiting for a new home to be completed at the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, Holland.
More than 250 bones are being put together over three days by an expert team to complete the dinosaur, with 70% of them being real fossils and the remainder replicas.
Remmert Schouten, conservator at the Natural History Museum of the Netherlands, is in charge of fitting together all the parts.
He said: “We’re looking at an extraordinary complete skeleton, in terms of palaeontology.
“We put that together and at the end you get the same skeleton you might have seen many times before, but it’s always in a different space and it has a different setting.
“Every time, it’s a surprise and a sense of awe.”
He added that Trix – believed to be a female – had scars on her jaw which were caused by another T-rex.
This could either be the result of a “scrap” or a “love bite”.
Trix is one of only three T-rex skeletons in the world and it was discovered in Montana in the United States.
Meanwhile, the famous Diplodocus sculpture Dippy remains on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum across the road from the Kelvin Hall.
Neil Clark, curator of palaeontology at the Hunterian Museum, said the installation of Trix is almost like a dinosaur “homecoming” as ancestors of the T-rex have been discovered in Scotland – albeit they were 100 million years older.
He added: “Having a T-rex is obviously very exciting because everybody knows about T-rex.
“It’s one of the big fearsome dinosaurs – one of the first of the big fearsome dinosaurs – and we have one of the most complete skeletons.
“It’s a marvellous opportunity for anyone who’s got any interest in dinosaurs to come and visit.”
Tickets for the Kelvin Hall exhibition are available now priced £14 for adults and £8 for children, with family tickets costing £39.50.
