Current News: Rare T-rexes are centerpiece of 'major dinosaur experience' at Los Angeles museum

MercuryNews.com: Rare T-rexes are centerpiece of 'major dinosaur experience' at Los Angeles museum

The toddler howls. The preteen growls. And the toothsome teen may be the next roaring bad boy of Los Angeles.

The Tyrannosaurus rex trio unveiled Wednesday at the Natural History Museum contains the youngest, the rarest and the hungriest-looking specimens in the world, paleontologists said.

As the centerpiece of a new Dinosaur Hall, they are set to go on display in July.

"The T-rexes are back!" said Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, as a curtain opened to reveal the skeletons of a baby, a juvenile and a young adult.

"There's movement. There's tension, screaming. I think the whole exhibit is very L.A. -- very hip. It's everything you want to be in this town."

The new Dinosaur Hall will feature more than 300 fossils, 20 complete dinosaurs and interactive exhibits galore.

Visitors will see iconic dinosaurs that lived and became extinct at different times, including the Triassic Coelophysis, the Jurassic Stegosaurus and the Mesozoic Tyrannosaurus rex.The exhibit, spanning the museum's 1913 and 1920 buildings, will also feature a never-before displayed Triceratops and a 68-foot Mamenchisaurus.

Twice the size of the museum's old dinosaur digs at 1,400 square feet, the new hall is part of a $135 million museum makeover

leading up to its 2013 centennial.

"The exhibition will emerge as one of the major dinosaur experiences in the world,"


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said Jane Pisano, president and director of the Exposition Park museum.

"Its specimens and science will easily position the museum as the West Coast hub for dinosaurs."

It was more than four decades ago that museum paleontologists unearthed a rare 20-foot T-rex juvenile and an 11-foot baby T-rex in the badlands of Montana, then stored them in the museum basement.

The 2-year-old T-rex from 66 million years ago, never before exhibited, is considered the youngest known specimen on the planet.

A few years ago, Chiappe and his team returned to Montana and discovered Thomas, a 34-foot male that ranks as among the most complete T-rexes ever found.

He lived large, apparently, before dying at the rebellious young age of 18.

"He was the James Dean of dinosaurs," said Doyle Trankina, a museum Dinosaur Institute sculptor who helped on the Montana dig, as well as fashioned the missing bones for baby Rex.

The three carnivores were sent to New Jersey, where their 210 respective bones were framed for a unique "growth series" display. It took five full-time workers a year and a half to prepare their skeletons for Los Angeles.

The result, now being assembled, is a dynamic dinosaur dinner drama.

The 21-foot-tall, 7,200-pound Thomas looms over the T-rex baby as they confront the snarling juvenile, who rears back to defend a duck-billed Edmontosaurus carcass.

The question, unanswered by the exhibit, is whether T-rexes hunted in roving packs or scavenged their reptile carrion.

"It's unique to Los Angeles," said Phil Fraley, of Phil Fraley Productions, one of North America's finest fossil articulators, whose company mounted Thomas as well as Sue, whose record 43-foot frame looms in Chicago.

"There's a relationship between all these skeletons not seen anywhere in the world."


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