Meet Scotty. Discovered near Eastend, Saskatchewan, by a high school teacher in 1991, Scotty is now considered the largest Tyrannosaurus rex ever found - maybe. Some assumptions are being made here; "biggest" is always a spicy headline. Nevertheless, this is one impressive beast. At a monstrous 42 ft in length and weighing an estimated 19,555 lbs, Scotty lived into his or her (no one knows its gender) late twenties or early thirties and died 66 million years ago, leaving evidence of a turbulent life: broken ribs, bite marks to both head and tail, presumably inflicted by another T. rex. The life of a dinosaur was anything but serene. Most did not survive to adulthood.
My favourite quote about Scotty is from Timothy Tokaryk, a palaeontologist who worked on the excavation, which took more than a decade: “The skeleton wasn’t laying on its side like a 40-foot chicken. It was all jumbled like a regurgitated omelet, so that made excavation much more of a challenge.” Having never regurgitated an omelet, I had to use my imagination.
Casts of Scotty can be seen at the T. rex Discovery Centre in Eastend (seen here), and at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, in Regina. Lest this series of photo glimpses of my adopted (or adoptive) province become too touristy, and for the sake of balance, I promise to include some bleak winter shots over the next few days to deter you from ever wanting to visit.
Photographed at the T. rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2018 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
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