Photography courtesy of the Saint Louis Science Center
An exhibition opening this Saturday, October 30, at the Saint Louis Science Center provides a fascinating look back through time at how T. rex got to be T. rex—mega jaws and silly little micro-arms and all.
Tyrannosaurs: Meet the Family is an immersive, multimedia exhibition featuring fossils, a life-size T. rex, examples of the evolving technology used in paleontology, and more. It provides new insights about the evolutionary path leading up to arguably the best-known of all the dinosaurs.
“When they first discovered him, no one had seen anything like him,” says Neville Crenshaw, manager of special exhibitions at the Science Center. “They named him the king of the tyrant lizards!”
The massive predator was discovered in 1902, at just the right moment to become a star, Crenshaw explains. It would be another 50 years or so before the next significant discoveries were made, and the terrifyingly photogenic creature served as excellent inspiration for villains in the nascent movie industry.
But T.rex didn’t just climb out of the primordial ooze. There were plenty of steps along the way.
“He didn’t exist in a vacuum,” says Crenshaw. “He’s just, like, the ultimate version of the Tyrannosaur family.”
For instance, the guanlong, discovered in China in the early 2000s, was an ancestor. Crenshaw says the smaller dinosaur looks more like what most of us would call a velociraptor. But after 100 million years of evolution, the creature led up to T.rex. That staggering amount of time can be hard for humans to even conceptualize, Crenshaw says, but the lineage is clear—and the exhibition walks through it.
Today is a fruitful time for paleontology as new geographic regions are joining in the hunt. “You have a lot of countries that have a rich history of dinosaurs that in the past haven’t been a place where they were doing a lot of scholastic research,” Crenshaw says. “Especially in China, you have a huge amount of tyrannosauroids.”
The exhibition is for the whole family, Crenshaw says. It includes giant fossil casts, re-creations of how the creatures would look based on the best available science, and hands-on activities, such as hatching eggs or using scientific tools.
Timed tickets are $14.95 for ages 13–59, $12.95 for seniors ages 60-plus, $10.95 for ages 5–12 and military, $7.50 for members, and free for ages 4 and under.
