/ARTS WEEKLY/ARTS: Tyrannosaurus Leads Fundraising for Russian Fossil Museum

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mark Bourrie

OTTAWA, Oct 22 2002 (IPS) - Part of Russia’s dinosaur collection has gone on tour to raise money for that country’s cash-strapped Paleontological Institute.

The collection boasts a Tyrannosaurus and other large dinosaurs that are familiar to North Americans, but it also includes the world’s best examples of Permian period giant amphibians and reptiles.

Almost all the fossil specimens in the exhibition were found in Russia and central Asia in the last 70 years.

The highlights are a fearsome eight-metre-long Tyrannosaurus bataar, the Asian relative of the North American T. rex, and its possible prey, a 10-metre-long Saurolophus angustirostris, a duck-billed, plant-eating dinosaur.

The show will raise several million dollars for the hard-pressed Paleontological Institute in Moscow. It began its Canadian run Dec. 26, 2001 at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, moved to Ottawa this month, and will leave Canada’s capital in early January for a show at the Daytona Beach Museum of Natural History in the United States.

If other museums book the show and it continues to turn a profit, the display will keep touring North America, says the collection’s manager, Yuri Gurin.

For many dinosaur fans and western palaeontologists, the exhibit gives a glimpse of the incredible discoveries made by Soviet scientists after the Second World War, when an army of fossil hunters set out to explore the Nemegt Basin region of the Gobi desert in Mongolia.

In 1952, at Altan Ula, the "Dragons’ Tomb”, three nearly complete tyrannosaur skeletons were exhumed along with seven specimens of Saurolophus.

There, the first Asian relative of T. Rex was named Tyrannosaurus bataar, meaning "tyrant warrior lizard”.

The world’s largest travelling exhibition of fossil tetrapods (four-limbed creatures including dinosaurs and ancient reptiles), the show reflects the most important stages in the evolutionary history of the vertebrates from the pre-dinosaur era to the origin of mammals.

Eighty-five per cent of these specimens are originals (not casts) and 12 are priceless type specimens – the first-to-be-described reference specimen for a newly identified species.

About half of the exhibition showcases a collection of rarely seen reptiles from the Permian Period (approximately 285 to 245 million years ago). At the time, the continents were joined in one super land mass called Pangaea.

The greatest mass extinction recorded in history occurred at the end of this period: 90 to 95 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land creatures were wiped out.

The Permian extinction opened niches for some of the surviving reptiles to evolve into dinosaurs.

Few localities outside of Russia possess good-quality fossils from the Permian period.

Five technicians from the Russian Paleontological Institute are travelling with the exhibition to make sure the material is not damaged in shipping or assembly.

Evgeni Kurochkin, a biologist and section head at the Russian institute, checks each bone as it is unpacked. He examines them for damage, setting aside the ones in need of attention. Repairs are made, broken pieces glued together, cracks filled with plaster, and metal braces adjusted.

Olga Afanasieva, a fish fossil specialist, applies watercolours to repairs with a skill acquired as an art student. She has made the trip to examine research collections at the Canadian Museum of Nature, but is expected to pitch in just the same.

State funding for the institute has virtually dried up, Gurin says. Salaries are at a subsistence level and research grants for international travel or fieldwork are almost non-existent.

A successful touring exhibit can raise $50,000 a month, and pay for the costs of shipping the fossils and the travel expenses of the technicians.

Since 1996, Paleontological Institute exhibits have appeared in more than a dozen countries and several American cities.

But much of the material in the current exhibit has never left Russia before.

”We were incredibly lucky to land the show,” said Canadian Museum of Nature spokesperson Laura Subin. ”We had people visiting Moscow at a time when they were entertaining offers.”

”And, judging from the number at the Toronto museum and here, it’s been a great success,” she said.