Tyrannosaurus rex
Late Cretaceous, about 66 million years ago
In the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs a Tyrannosaurus rex stalks forward with its head low and its tail stretched out behind, as if it had just caught your scent. The skeleton is one of the most complete and famous of its species, and the skull in particular is superb, with the great arched jaws, the forward facing eye sockets and teeth as long as bananas. About half of the bones are original fossil, including the skull, most of the spine and the ribs, and the rest are casts. Notice the absurdly small two fingered arms, which have puzzled scientists for a century.
The pose is a lesson in how ideas change. When the skeleton was first mounted in 1915 it stood upright like a kangaroo, dragging its tail along the ground, the image that fixed Tyrannosaurus in popular culture. In the 1990s the museum remounted it in the horizontal stance that modern research supports, with the backbone level and the tail held up as a counterweight to the enormous head. Look at the hips and the thick leg bones, built to carry an animal that weighed as much as an elephant, and at the neck vertebrae, which allowed the head to swing sideways in a slashing bite.
The bones were found in 1908 by Barnum Brown, the museum's legendary fossil hunter, at Big Dry Creek in Montana. Brown had discovered the first Tyrannosaurus in 1902, and that skeleton was later sold to Pittsburgh; this second find, with its complete skull, became the one the museum kept and the one that made the species world famous.
Did You Know? During the Second World War the museum considered moving the skeleton out of the city for fear that New York might be bombed.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.