Brian Switek has an interesting post over at Smithonian.com. In it, he describes the new dinosaur display in the Natural History Museum. The renovated dinosaur and fossil hall is slated to reopen in 2019. One of the main scenes will feature a Tyrannosaurus rex and an Triceratops locked in grim pose.
Most museum-bound dinosaurs are reconstructed standing still or in mid-stride, isolated from each other in the cavernous space of exhibition galleries. But in the Smithsonian’s new dinosaur hall, designed and approved by museum experts including Matthew Carrano, curator of dinosaurs, the Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus will have a much closer connection.
Bent down with jaws agape, the 38-foot-long “Wankel rex,” named after Kathy Wankel who discovered it in 1988, will be positioning itself to pull off the skull from the carcass of the Triceratops, known as “Hatcher” for its 19th-century discoverer.
Inspired by tyrannosaur bite marks found on the frills of multiple Triceratops specimens, the display catches a grisly and terrifying moment that we know must have happened between 68 and 66 million years ago.
“It’s a grim scene,” Carrano acknowledges, but the fossil evidence backs up the skeletal moment frozen in time. Healed wounds and scrapes on Cretaceous bones have shown that Tyrannosaurus was both a capable hunter and an opportunistic scavenger, just as spotted hyenas are today. Visitors will be left to wonder whether the Smithsonian's T. rex caught its meal on the hoof or happened onto a rotting slab of carrion—and let nothing go to waste.
