T.rex Discovery Centre, Paleontology museum in Eastend, Canada
The T.rex Discovery Centre is a natural history museum in Eastend, Saskatchewan, in a building designed by Stantec. Its Cretaceous Gallery covers the Bearpaw and Frenchman formations, with ammonites, marine reptiles and dinosaur fossils; the Cenozoic Gallery holds Ravenscrag Formation mammals and reptiles, including a life-size Brontothere cast. A cast of Scotty, a 65% complete Tyrannosaurus rex, is displayed.
The idea for a palaeontological centre in the Frenchman River Valley began in 1988 through public meetings in Eastend, and the T.rex Discovery Centre opened in 2001. On 16 August 1991 local high school principal Robert Gebhardt, prospecting with Royal Saskatchewan Museum palaeontologists Tim Tokaryk and John Storer, found a T. rex tail vertebra on a cattle trail; a jaw with teeth followed. Preparation by hand took until 2011 and revealed 65% of the skeleton. The Royal Saskatchewan Museum took over operations on 14 February 2013.
The centre is named after Scotty, the Tyrannosaurus rex whose remains were found in the Frenchman River Valley in 1991. A cast of Scotty went on display there on 15 March 2013, and a second cast followed in an exhibit developed by the Australian Museum in November 2013. The specimen's nickname honours the palaeontologists' discovery, and the museum's galleries present fossils from the Bearpaw and Frenchman formations.
The centre sits in the Frenchman River Valley about 25 km southeast of Eastend, so plan for a drive rather than a walk from town. Inside, the Fossil Research Station is where palaeontologists prepare and study specimens collected during the summer field season, and visitors can watch that work. Scotty's cast went on display on 15 March 2013.
The skeleton is only about 65% complete: preparators spent two decades from 1991 to 2011 removing it almost entirely by hand from the rock. In 2019 Scotty was described as the largest and oldest T. rex known, estimated at 8,870 kg, 13.2 m long and over 30 years old, surpassing Sue's 28 years.
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