Making public fossils public

Greg Liggett, Paleontologist, Montana/Dakotas State Office

Truly spectacular fossils are rare. But here is one that you can view for yourself right now! It is the Tufts-Love Tyrannosaurus rex, discovered in the badlands of Montana on BLM land in 2016. Its name comes from the combined names of the Burke Museum of Natural History volunteers who discovered it, Luke Tufts and Jason Love.

In many respects, the Tufts-Love specimen is an “ordinary” T. rex. It is not the largest, with its skull measuring about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide. It was about 15 years in age when it died, with adults usually living to about 25 years. But what is remarkable is its level of preservation.

Despite being one of the most beloved of all dinosaurs, T. rex skulls are rare. There are around three dozen partial specimens of the species in museum collections, but we only have 15 partial or nearly complete skulls. Most of the time skulls get broken or crushed during fossilization, and pieces go missing. But the Tufts-Love specimen only suffered minor damage and distortion from burial, and many of the delicate bones inside the skull remained in perfect anatomical place.

The specimen was preserved in an ancient riverbed that washed sand around and into the skull, providing excellent support for its 66 million years of rest before being discovered. It was clear in the field that this specimen was special, so the skull was removed in a large block so it could be carefully prepared under controlled condition in the museum’s lab. That work has been completed after three painstaking years. And not only can the public see this fantastic skull on display at the Burke Museum in Seattle, everyone around the world can see a digital replication!

The skull was digitally scanned by Triebold Paleontology. Converting the specimen to a digital model allows for digitally “repairing” the skull, something that is more difficult to do with the real specimen. You can view both the original skull, and the digitally modified specimen. Notice the missing bone in the nose area, crushing of the top of the skull at the back, and the missing bones on the right side at the jaw in the original. View the modified specimen to see how that could be repaired digitally.

The revolution of digital replication will increasingly allow public fossils, like the Tufts-Love specimen, to be accessible to everyone, researchers to school children, around the world. The BLM is making public fossils truly public.

It is recommended to open the links in Chrome.

Link to the original

https://skfb.ly/6QwyB

Modified specimen

https://skfb.ly/6Qwyx