Visitors to a Seattle museum over the weekend watched as paleontologists began work on removing the rock encasing of a rare Tyrannosaurus rex skull that was discovered in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation – an area that has produced many of the world's most remarkable dinosaur specimens.
Dr. Greg Wilson is a University of Washington biology professor and the paleontologist who led the excavation of “the iconic dinosaur” last summer.
The remarkable discovery of a mostly complete T. rex skull, vertebrae, ribs, hips, and lower jawbone were loaded onto a flatbed truck and hauled to Seattle.
Wilson’s team has spent the past year preparing the dinosaur's lower jawbone and ribs. On Saturday, they began removing the sandstone encasing the rare 4-foot-long skull as about twelve-hundred visitors watched through a large glass window.
“Our expert preparers are using things like pin-vices – like little needles on the ends of a pen – and they're flicking away the little grains of sand to reveal this beautiful mahogany brown bone of the T. rex skull, and brushing that away with brushes you would paint a house with,” said Wilson.
Burke Museum visitors will be able to follow progress made on the skull over the next several months. According to a museum press release, this is one of only a handful of times the public has ever had the opportunity to see preparation of a T. rex, and it is even rarer to be able to see the process on a T. rex skull.
Scientists estimate the dinosaur is 85 percent the size of the largest T. rex discovered and lived about 15 years.