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Cryolophosaurus ellioti will be ready for visitors Oct. 7.
A Jurassic creature will soon be roaming Ohio State University’s Orton Hall.
The Orton Hall Museum is finally getting its dinosaur, thanks to donations from the community. The skeleton of Cryolophosaurus ellioti will greet visitors to the museum starting Oct. 7.
This carnivorous dinosaur resembles a Tyrannosaurus rex but is about half the size. The bones were found by retired Ohio State geology professor David Elliot in 1991. The skeleton that will be displayed is cast from those bones.
“This is the largest early-Jurassic carnivorous dinosaur that we know about,” said museum curator Dale Gnidovec.
To get the dinosaur, the museum set a fundraising goal of $80,000 in March of last year; $60,000 of that goal was raised through Buckeye Funder, the university’s crowdfunding platform. News of the project was spread via word of mouth and social media, Gnidovec said.
The remaining $20,000 was kicked in by an anonymous donor.
“We are honored and proud that the Buckeye community, all over the country, all over the world, joined together to bring this to campus,” said Samara Preisler, senior director of development for Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Donors could donate $28 for the 28 teeth in the lower jaw of Cryolophosaurus ellioti, $177 because it is approximately 177 million years old, and a number of other figures that corresponded with dimensions of the dinosaur, Preisler said.
The 22-foot-long, 1,000pound cast dinosaur skeleton will be installed in one day at the end of September by Research Casting International, a Canadian company. The Cryolophosaurus ellioti skeleton will be made of plastic.
The university hopes the dinosaur will bring in more visitors.
“Everyone has some sort of connection to dinosaurs, whether they’re a little kid, or they watched “Jurassic Park” growing up,” Preisler said. “This is something special.”
Gnidovec said he hopes that when people see the dinosaur, it will “kick-start” fundraising for other renovations. A lot of the other exhibits need updating, he said.
“We’re hoping to add some space, too. We have a lot of cool stuff that we just don’t have room to display,” Gnidovec said. “There are entire periods of geological history that we’re just not covering.”