It was the biggest dinosaur that ever lived, so when museum
experts tried to reconstruct a life-sized skeleton of the recently discovered Titanosaur
it presented something of a challenge.
The American Museum of Natural History in New York needed
to use some careful spatial planning when it built a replica of the enormous
creature for a new exhibition.
At 20 ft (6 m) tall and 122 ft (37 m) long, the recently
discovered dinosaur's skeleton is so big it does not fit in the museum’s
warehouse-sized exhibition room.
Instead curators were forced to build the massive dinosaur
so that its head pokes out of the door to the huge room.
Visitor's to the exhibition, which opens in New York today,
pass under the creature's massive head, which hangs just 9.5 ft (2.8 m) above
the floor.
A video from the museum shows a time-lapse of the
construction team putting the giant bone jigsaw together.
The Titanosaur, which has yet to be given an official
species name, was uncovered by paleontologists in a desert region of Argentine
Patagonia in 2014, after a farmer found what he suspected to be fossils.
Scientists believe the creatures lived 100 million years
ago, and fed exclusively on vegetation.
The 122-foot-long dinosaur stands 20 feet tall and likely
weighed 70 tons, about the same as 10 African elephants. Its thigh bones alone
are each nearly 8 feet long.
To build the giant structure, the museum team started with
the giant hind legs and pelvis.
From there, it was built up over a number of hours adding
sections of the spine, followed by the forelegs, ribs, neck, head and tail.
The dinosaur was identified from among 223 fossils from the
Patagonian site, by paleontologists from the Museo Paleontológico Egidio
Feruglio in Argentina and a team at the American Museum of Natural History.
The museum staff worked with Canadian company, Research
Casting International, to produce the skeleton.
The giant cast took the Canadian firm more than six months
to make, based on 84 fossil bones that were excavated from the site in 2014.
To build the display, the bones were recreated through
plaster casts and 3-D printing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the skull was
partially designed using a single tooth.
The real fossils would have been far too heavy to mount, so
the life-size model is made of fiberglass.
With its neck elevated, the titanosaur would have been tall
enough to peer into the window of a five-story building, the museum said.
The Titanosaur will be shown to the public in a walking
pose, with its neck stretched out toward the museum's fourth-floor elevators.
In a Tweet from its official account, the museum states: “Ladies
& gentlemen, we are proud to present the Titanosaur, the Museum's largest
dinosaur.”
A new video from the American Museum of Natural History in New York shows the construction of a replica of the world's biggest dinosaur for a new exhibition. The video shows a time-lapse of the construction team putting the giant fiberglass bone jigsaw together.
At 20 ft (6 m) tall and 122 ft (37 m) long, the recently
discovered dinosaur's skeleton is so big it does not fit in the museum’s
warehouse-sized exhibition room.
Reconstructing the Titanosaur
The 122-foot-long dinosaur stands 20 feet tall and likely
weighed 70 tons, according to the Wall Street Journal, about the same as 10
African elephants.
Its thigh bone is nearly 8 feet long.
To build the display, the bones were recreated through
plaster casts and 3-D printing.
Scientists from the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio
and a team at the American Museum of Natural History collaborated with a
Canadian company, Research Casting International worked with what they had,
using existing bones to create what wasn't there.
Now, the Titanosaur will be shown to the public in a
walking pose, with its neck stretched out toward the museum's fourth-floor
elevators.
This is the only way the dinosaur would fit in the
building.
Some of the best-preserved bones will also be on display,
amongst them being the massive femur.
