August 31 , 2016

by Steve Johnson

There was a new big T. rex in town, but it is not as complete as Sue and it was only here long enough to get on a plane, like countless other travelers passing through O'Hare.

Trix, the name Dutch museumgoers gave to a top-quality top predator skeleton discovered three years ago in Montana, got on board KLM Flight 612 on Tuesday afternoon en route to Leiden's Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the Netherlands' national natural history museum.

There, she — the animal is likely, though not certainly, a female — will become the "first and only T. rex that will be permanently exhibited in mainland Europe," Dutch Consul General in Chicago Louis Piet said at a reception for the carnivore he hosted at his Gold Coast residence Monday night.

At the airport Tuesday passengers on that Chicago-to-Amsterdam flight learned that their rollaways were being joined by more precious cargo. Unlike other fliers, Trix travels inside her own luggage, foam-stuffed wooden crates designed for easy assembly and disassembly.

Passengers were treated to cake and could see the specimen being loaded, three palettes bearing nine crates, 11,000 pounds total. At the gate, Piet and dinosaur scientists from the U.S. and the Netherlands lauded the animal's move to the continent with praise and an oversized Dutch passport.

And when Trix goes on display Sept. 10, Naturalis will no longer be "pretty much Vegan Park," as Anne Schulp, the museum's chief paleontologist, said at the Monday reception. "We were missing a big carnivore."

There are different ways of measuring, but Trix is safely "one of the best three rexes that have been found," 75 percent to 80 percent intact, said Pete Larson, president of South Dakota's Black Hills Geological Research Institute, which has hustled to prepare and mount the animal in time for its Sept. 16 unveiling in the Netherlands.

"It's a fantastic specimen," said Larson, who connected Naturalis with the landowners for a transaction that was conducted privately. All told, Naturalis invested about 5 million euros (about $5.7 million) in the project, including acquisition, excavation and exhibition, museum officials said Monday.

At a 1997 auction, the Field paid $8.36 million for Sue, more than 90 percent intact, which has become its flagship attraction. The other T. rex in the top three is a specimen at Black Hills known as Stan, said Larson, who was with Sue Hendrickson when she discovered the Sue specimen.

Trix lacked some of the smaller bones; "we sent them digital files of Sue's feet so they could complete the mount," said Peter Makovicky, the Field's curator of dinosaurs.

More exciting from a scientific standpoint, said Makovicky, is that Naturalis was part of the excavation almost from the outset, allowing their scientists to study the sediment, dig out the bones and so on. "They're trying to get the whole story from this T. rex, which we were never really able to do with Sue," Makovicky said.

Said Schulp, "We wanted the skeleton, the science, the whole story behind this dinosaur."

And in its display pose Trix will be the most complete such animal. "We are doing something completely ridiculous," said Schulp, who even before telling why they suspect Trix is female explained that Anne, his first name, is sometimes a man's name in the Netherlands. "We are going to put an original skull on an original skeleton."

The Dutch, working with Larson's team at Black Hills, devised a unique, low-to-the-ground pose that allows the weight of the head to be supported; other T. rexes, like Sue, use a replica skull because the real one is too heavy to be supported in the more traditional head-up pose.

"You can really look the beast in the eye," Schulp said.