One-of-a-kind fossil shows T. rex and Triceratops locked in battle to the death

When you imagine dinosaurs fighting, the first match that comes to your mind is Triceratops vs. T. rex. In our collective imagination, they fight eternally. It’s the clash of the titans. But do these battles Actually take place?

Yes. Yes they have. We have the fossils to prove it, and for the first time, the public will have a look.

The fossil – nicknamed “Dueling Dinosaurs” – was originally discovered in 2006, but so far it has only been seen by a select few. It shows a T. rex and a Triceratops in battle, literally fighting to the death. The pair are kept in a fossil first exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, The Charlotte Observer reported on November 17.

The fossil shows the Triceratops and T. rex to this day, preserved together in an unusual predator-prey encounter.

Unlike other museum exhibits where dinosaur skeletons are preserved and then assembled to stand proudly, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences plans to exhibit this fossil encased in sandstone, as staff paleontologists slowly remove sediment that surrounds the bones.

Why is this important? The specimen includes the best-preserved skeletons of Triceratops and T. rex to date.

We will have the only 100% complete T. rex skeleton ever found. The two dinosaurs have been preserved together at a potential predator-prey encounter. pic.twitter.com/HbZmAngpWW

– Museum of Natural Sciences in North Carolina (@naturalsciences) November 17, 2020

Visitors to the museum will also be able to ask questions of working paleontologists while they work on the exhibit.

“There is such a gold mine of scientific information to be discovered,” museum director Eric Dorfman told the Charlotte Observer. “We already have a fantastic reputation for allowing people to see science unfold in real time. People can walk and see the researchers do the work they do. This fossil allows us to take this idea to people who are taking real-time science to the next level. “

Thanks to this donation, our world-renowned researchers have access to rare biological data typically lost in preservation.

Fossils exhibit incredible features such as body contours, skin impressions, soft tissue, wounds, and more, to ensure decades of research. pic.twitter.com/oNU8h7XRBp

– North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (@naturalsciences) November 17, 2020

The fossils were acquired for $ 6 million by the nonprofit Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences through private funds and will be donated to the Museum’s Vertebrate Paleontology Collection. The construction of the museum on the SECU Dinolab begins in 2021.

“We haven’t studied this specimen yet; it’s a scientific frontier. The preservation is phenomenal, and we plan to use all available technological innovations to reveal new information on the biology of T. rex and Triceratops. fossil will forever change our perspective of the world’s two favorite dinosaurs, ”Dr. Lindsay Zanno, head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, said in a statement.