Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
That’s a total Rex First complete T-rex skeleton.. and the dinosaur it was fighting at death
THE first complete T-rex skeleton has been revealed, along with the triceratops it was fighting as they died 67 million years ago.
The duelling dinosaurs are preserved together in what is thought to be a fatal predator-prey encounter.
Both the remains are among the best ever found. Their body outlines, skin impressions and injuries – including tyrannosaurus teeth stuck in the triceratops’s body – can still be seen.
Each bone is in its natural position and scientists will have access to biological d ata usually lost in the excavation and preparation processes.
A cattle rancher and two fossil hunter pals found the 14-ton skeletons entombed in sediment in Montana, USA, in 2006.
It took years to extract them and to arrange for their sale, and so far only a few dozen people have seen them.
But now they are to go on display after being bought by the Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural
Sciences for an undisclosed sum and donated to the museum.
Announcing the purchase, the museum, which plans to start building the exhibition next year, released incredible photos of what it called “one of the most important paleontological discoveries of our time”.
Head of paleontology Dr Lindsay Zanno said: “The preservation is phenomenal, and we plan to use every technological innovation available to reveal new information on the biology of the T-rex and triceratops.”
Mu s e u m c h i e f Dr Eric Dorfman added: “We are able to uncover unknown details of these animals’ anatomy and behaviour.”
The fossils first went to auction at Bonhams in New York in 2013 but were unsold after failing to fetch their reserve price of £4.5million.