In 2000, an extremely rare pregnant Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur skeleton was found in Montana. It is a place known for its groundbreaking dinosaur discoveries in the past.
Naturalist Ferdinand Hayden found the first identified dinosaur remains in North America in 1854 near Judith Landing in the Missouri River Breaks National Monument. He said to have found them when paleontologist Joseph Leidy thought he found a duck-billed dinosaur called "Trachodon."
Barabara the Pregnant T. Rex
Barbara is one of the three pregnant dinosaur fossils ever found and will be featured at Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, in New Zealand starting on December 2. Newsweek reported that she was discovered by Nate Cooper, Clayton and Luke Phipps, Chris Morrow, and Katie Busch in the Hell Creek Formation buried in a 66-million-year-old sediment in Montana.
The process of excavating the dinosaur began with large movers that eventually became meticulously delicate. In the end, they finally uncovered the fossilized pregnant T. rex. Paleontologists determined that the specimen was an adult female carrying eggs who likely suffered a severe foot injury that limited her movements.
Due to that, she could have been unable to hunt, and perhaps she scavenged for food or was fed by other members of their pack. But her injury lived, which suggests that she lived long even after being hurt. Despite having a pronounced limp then, she was still fortunate to recover where she could mate.
As her skeletons will go on to be displayed at the museum, visitors can see a healed metatarsal bone that has probably been the worst injured part. It is Barbara's first time in public viewing, featuring several of her largest bones in pristine condition. Like haws and head.
Barbara is the eighth most complete T. rex ever discovered, with 44.7% of its skeleton present and measures about 11.7 meters long and 3.4 meters high. Aside from her, other dinosaur fossils will also be there, like Peter the T. rex. It will be an incredible experience as it is the first time for both male and female T. rex to be displayed together.
Discovering Barbara
Bob Harmon, of the Museum of the Rockies in Montana, was sitting at a dinosaur territory one day in 2000 when he unexpectedly felt a fossil behind his back, Live Science reported. He shared the good news with his colleagues and then spent the last three years excavating the enormous specimen.
The paleontologists gave the femur and a leg bone to experts and colleagues who examined the microscopic features of the fossil. They publicly announced their discovery in 2005 in the journal Science, detailing that the fossil has a medullary bone. This bone is only present before or during the egg-laying process, which means the T. rex was likely pregnant when it died.
They named the fossilized pregnant T. rex Barabara. But she is not the first known example of a pregnant dinosaur. An Allosaurus, a T.rex relative, and a herbivorous duck-billed dinosaur, Tenontosaurus, were also previously discovered.
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