At the crack of dawn this morning, a long-awaited Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, dubbed the Nation’s T. rex, ended its epic road trip, when a 53-foot-long semi pulled up to the loading dock at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. The arrival of the Nation’s T. Rex marks both the end of the specimen’s long journey from its previous home at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, and the end of the Smithsonian’s long quest to acquire a T. rex specimen.
Originally named for its discoverer, rancher Kathy Wankel who found it in 1988 in eastern Montana, the fossil was excavated by paleontologist Jack Horner in 1989 to 1990. The 65-million-year-old specimen is one of the most complete T. rex skeletons found. At 38-feet-long and weighing in at 7 tons, the fossil skeleton now called the Nation's T-rex will get its moment in the spotlight, as part of the museum’s dinosaur hall, which will close for renovations on April 28 to reopen again in 2019.
In June of last year, the Smithsonian reached an agreement with the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the skeleton is on loan to the Smithsonian for the next 50 years. At 80 to 85 percent of a full T. rex skeleton, the Wankel T. rex is among the most complete fossils of its kind unearthed, second only to the Chicago Field Museum’s “Sue,” which the Smithsonian tried to acquire in 1997. Beyond these stunning skeletal displays, paleontologists have found some 50 T. rex specimens, since Henry Fairfield Osborn first described the species in 1905.
The king of reptiles, though mighty and well documented in the fossil record, remains largely a
mystery to paleontologists who have yet to understand the creature’s basic lifestyle and biology.
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