However, it turned out to be a replica.
Now the veil has finally been uncovered from this mystery. The 39-foot-tall (11.7 m tall) T. rex will be a star attraction at a new Museum of Natural History, expected to open in 2025 in Abu Dhabi.
The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, currently under construction, will be located in the emirate’s Saadiyat Cultural District, which will also be home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
The Murchison meteorite specimen will be on display at the Natural History Museum in Abu Dhabi, which is expected to open in 2025. Credit: Abu Dhabi Department of Culture
Steve Brussett, Professor and Personal Chair of Paleontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences, said it was “wonderful” that Stan would be displayed in a museum.
“This is a new museum, so it does not yet have a legacy of research and conservation, and I hope the Stan will be a permanent part of its collection and available for researchers to study and for the public to see, forever.” ” He said via email.
“There aren’t many natural history museums in the Middle East, so Stan has a chance to be an ambassador: for dinosaurs, paleontology and science. This is welcome news and it eases my biggest fear, that Stan is private. Will disappear into the collection of an oligarch or any other porn rich man, never again to be seen in the light of science or the public eye.”
At 13 feet (4 m) high, Stan is made up of 188 bones, making it the world’s largest and most complete T. rex makes one of the skeletons.
The first of its bones were found in the Hell Creek Formation, parts of Montana, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming in 1987 by Stan Sacrisson, an amateur paleontologist for whom it is named.
Initially misidentified as Triceratops bones, they remained undisturbed until 1992, when paleontologists realized their true origins.
Then it took more than 30,000 hours of labor to excavate and restore the skeleton. Researchers have since found that Stan survived a broken neck during his lifetime, after which his two vertebrae were fused together.
He also has scars on his skull and one rib that may have been caused by another T. rex.
Stan would have weighed 7 to 8 tons – almost twice as much as today’s African elephant – and its longest teeth would have measured over 11 inches (28 cm), with serrated edges.