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Bones of Samson

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Written by Bones of Samson   
Sunday, 13 December 2009 05:28

The skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex will make its museum debut at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The fossilized bones of a 40-foot-long predator dinosaur that weighed 7.5 tons and lived 66 million years ago will be on display beginning Dec. 17, 2009.

PORTLAND, PR.- The skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex will make its museum debut at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry along the banks of the Willamette River. Museum President Nancy Stueber said the fossilized bones of a 40-foot-long predator dinosaur that weighed 7.5 tons and lived 66 million years ago will be on display beginning Dec. 17 through the end of summer 2010.  Scientists haven't settled on whether the animal was male or female, Stueber said.

Known as Samson, the fossil was dug up in the 1990s in South Dakota. It has been in private hands since then, most recently purchased this fall by an anonymous buyer after a failed Las Vegas auction.

It is among three T. rex skeletons with more than half the bones remaining, and its skull is well preserved, the museum said in a statement.

A similar T. rex fossil sold for $8.3 million in 1997 and is now housed at the Field Museum in Chicago. That dinosaur, named Sue, is 42 feet long and has more than 200 bones.

An unknown species?

One of the most significant aspects of the skeleton known as SAMSON is that it may belong to a small subset of North American Tyrannosaurus specimens that may represent a new - as yet unnamed - species.

SAMSON is one of only four specimens whose skulls show substantial variation from the holotype of Tyrannosaurus rex. Differences in the tooth counts and the proportions of the skull have led some researchers to conclude that these specimens are likely something new. Unlike other skeletons, SAMSON has been prepared and conserved with modern methods and materials, and is the ideal specimen to test this hypothesis.

In 2005, SAMSON's skull was sent to NASA for examination using their high-tech x-ray equipment. The Marshall Space Flight Center used their X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) scanner to provide detailed cross-section images of the skull. Such detail helped experts better understand the anatomy and lifestyle of the Tyrannosaurus rex.

The Portland museum doesn't have an estimate of how many people the dinosaur skeleton might attract, Stueber said.

Stueber recalled her excitement as a young girl in Pennsylvania visiting fossil displays at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and said she hopes Samson stirs youngsters in Oregon in the same way.  Visit : http://www.omsi.edu/

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

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