Museum to Cut floor to Accommodate giant T-rex
A full-scale model of Scotty, one of the largest T-rex fossils in the world, is coming to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
“Scotty is arguably one of the largest Tyrannosaurus Rexes in the world, and he doesn’t have a home in Regina right now,” said Michelle Hunter, executive director of Friends of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
Originally discovered in Saskatchewan’s Frenchman River Valley in 1991, a casting of Scotty is already in the museum’s T.rex Discovery Centre in Eastend.
Regina will receive a second casting of Scotty.
To make way for the massive dinosaur, a hole will be cut in the floor connecting the upper and lower exhibit spaces, and visitors will be able to admire Scotty from both levels.
Harold Bryant, retired director of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, is excited for the dinosaur’s arrival. He estimated Scotty is about 12 metres from nose to tail.
“I worked for the museum for 20 years and was somewhat involved with the collection and preservation of the skeleton in a minor way,” he said. “This is just a great step forward for the museum and the province.”
This new dinosaur exhibit is part of the museum’s larger revitalization project that includes a brandnew community space, and the already completed new elevator installation and accessible washroom.
The project received $472,000 in federal funding from the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund, announced Thursday at the museum by federal minister and Regina MP Ralph Goodale.
“The Royal Saskatchewan Museum has been an icon in this community for as long as almost any of us can remember. It obviously needs reinvestment to bring it up to modern-day standards, to improve the accessibility and the utility of the public area,” said Goodale.
“It’s an anchor facility for attracting tourism to Saskatchewan.”
The federal funding will cover the cost of the community space. An additional $1.2 million from the Friends of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum and the museum itself is funding the rest of the project.
“This is really important to not only the museum but also the general public. Museums tend to be considered as vaults as opposed to being living places, and this museum is really a living space. It’s evolving, it’s growing, it’s changing,” said Hunter.
“This is a game-changer for the museum ... It creates a brand-new community space that will be used by everybody that visits.”
Hunter said the new community space will provide a better area for programming, school groups and personal events like weddings, changing how the museum can be used.
The revitalization project is expected to be completed by the spring of 2019, although it might take longer for Scotty to be installed.