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A Fantastic Day at the Old Burke


BentonlWalters

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As the lockdown continues and I can’t go on any new adventures here’s another amazing experience from my palaeontological back catalogue. A little shorter this time than my Burgess Shale story.

 

I was back home from university for the Christmas holiday and decided to go with my family to the Burke Museum in Seattle. I’d been many times before as a child but this time I was going to see something special the Tufts-Love rex, and I got lucky.

 

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We had arrived in the morning just before they opened and were one of the only families there, as I was peering into the lab area trying to see as much as possible, the preparator stopped, came to the door and asked if I wanted to see it up close. Next thing I knew I was face to face with the T-rex. Looking at it up close you could see the fine detail in the bone where veins ran into the maxilla and the almost feathered texture of the supraorbital ridge.

 

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She even let me touch it, something I never expected a museum to allow me to do. Of course I couldn’t pass up the photo op.

 

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In the picture the googly eye is in the wrong place, it should be up a little higher where in its place one of the preparators put a sticky not saying “no more prepping in eye hole”. Clearly the temptation to continue in further and hollow out the skull while it was still half in block was just too strong. You can also see one of the nasal bones has been exposed and has been displaced. At the time I got to see it, they weren’t sure if this meant that the other was missing  or how complete the other side of the skull was. Now that the skull has been fully prepared we know (There is a fantastic thread elsewhere on the forum by @Troodon documenting its preparation). 100% of the skeletal elements are present and it’s one of the most complete skulls ever found.

 

I haven’t seen it fully prepared yet though, since I haven’t gotten back to the Burke since it has been renovated but next time I’m back in Seattle it’s the first thing I’m going to do.

 

Thank you all for reading,

Benton

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First the Burgess Shale, now a beautifully preserved Tyrannosaurus skull. You really are ticking off every item in my paleo-stuff-to-see bucket list ;)

Seriously, that's a truly great experience - thanks for showing us!

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Opalised fossils are the best: a wonderful mix between paleontology and mineralogy!

 

Q. Where do dinosaurs study?

A. At Khaan Academy!...

 

My ResearchGate profile

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Are you kidding me?!?! :default_faint:

 

First the Burgess Shale and now this?! :envy:

Congratulations on having these awesome experiences and thanks for sharing them with us!

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  -Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. -Bill Nye (The Science Guy)

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Long before he helped find that T. rex, Jason Love discovered the world's youngest specimen of the early pinniped Enaliarctos (Astoria Fm., Oregon) and donated it to the Burke Museum, and donated some money which helped kick start a whole series of student research travel grants to work on the long-neglected marine mammal collection at UWBM. Jason's contributions have been quite critical in that regard and have resulted in about a half dozen new papers by students/early career paleontologists since 2016. We published the specimen that kicked all of this off back in 2017: https://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app63/app003992017.pdf

 

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