Royal Ontario Museum Discovers Long Lost Dinosaur Skeleton In Own Archives
Posted November 14, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
What’s 90 feet long, used to wander the earth and was forgotten about in the hallowed halls of the Royal Ontario Museum? It’s the long missing remains of a dinosaur and red-faced ROM officials admit it’s been inside the building for more than 40 years. But they didn’t know that until this month.
The Museum obtained the skeleton of the Barosaurus in 1962, when its former curator made a trade with a counterpart in Pittsburgh. But when he retired, the bones were forgotten about and stayed buried in the ROM’s archives. The museum has now expanded and was looking for a version of the species for its big reopening to add to those it already has on display.
Associate curator David Evans had been hunting for the remains of the creature for months, when he found a reference to one in an old article that told him where to look – the ROM’s own basement. The bones hadn’t been catalogued, there were no real records of them and some of them had been used in other displays with no indication that they were part of a whole. Until that lucky article put him back on the right track.
“When all the parts were pulled together we realized just how much of the animal the ROM actually had, the better part of a skeleton of a rare, giant dinosaur,” explains associate curator David Evans in a statement.
“It was an exciting day,” he admits about the late find. “We were searching for an iconic sauropod skeleton, and we had one under our noses the whole time.”
According to the museum specs, the Barosaurus skeleton includes four massive neck vertebrae, a complete set of vertebrae from the back, the pelvis, 14 tail vertebrae, both upper arm bones, both thigh bones (each 55 inches in length), a lower leg, and various other pieces. The entire assembled skeleton is estimated to be 80 feet long, stretching to as much as 90 once fully mounted, and when it was alive, the animal would have weighed at least 15 tonnes.
You’ll be able to see what the facility boasts as the largest fully restored dinosaur skeleton in Canada, when the expanded museum opens its new exhibit on December 15th. And what’s a month wait after 150 million years?
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