December 2016: ARTS & CULTURE: Everything you wanted to know...

about Tyrannosaurus Rex but were afraid to ask....  Now, since September 2013 there are three. One of them is exhibited in the Naturalis Biodiversity Center of Leiden, the first T-Rex outside the US. Three years ago the 67 million year-old fossil was discovered in a farmer's field in Montana and later escavated by a Dutch team of archaeologists. In August 2016, the believed to be female, named Trix, was carefully packaged and cargoed to Leiden where Trix was welcomed with fanfare. Since then, her entire skeleton of twelve and a half meters is on display and, consequently the talk of the town.How to Seduce a T-RexThe exhibition T-Rex in Town is a children's dream come true. With the exception of the actual skeleton, there are no parents or security guards yelling "Don't Touch". On the contrary, Naturalis' curators encourage kids (small and adult-sized) to interact with the T-Rex through various multimedias that have been set up around the viewing of the skeleton. One includes a mating dance where kids can seduce her by imitating her gestures. Another involves touching plaster replica's of her teeth, and standing on a scale and seeing if there is enough body weight to feed the 50 kilo required daily intake of meat.According to bone scans, it has been determined that Trix's thirty years on the planet were not uneventful. She suffered from a large lesion on four of her ribs, suggesting that she walked around with four broken ribs for some time. Trix was probably also bitten by another T-Rex in the lower part of her jaw, and suffered from inflammation in her tail vertebrae. The ancient reptile survived her medical aliments and probably had some unease for the rest of her life."Objects in mirror are closer than they appear"With her 5,000 kilos of weight (the same weight as five small cars), Trix had extremely strong legs, and is believed to have been able to run 20 kilometers an hour. Visitors can frantically pedal on a bicycle while, on a screen, view the T-Rex chase them from behind. The multimedia interaction congers ups a carton from Gary Larson's "The Farside" with a woman sitting in a car and seeing a giant eyeball of a dinosaurus in her sideview mirror. The safety warning on the bottom of the mirror reads "objects in mirror are closer than they appear". In the coming years, five more dinosaurs from recent excavations in Montana are expected to be added to the Naturalis' collection, which, no doubt, will mean more hands-on dinosaurus fun for young and old.T-Rex in TownNaturalis Biodiversity CenterTil 6 June 2017Check website for opening hours and prices:www.naturalis.nl