The Florida Museum of Natural History has a new resident. She stands about 9 feet tall, and it would take a person about 17 steps to walk from her tail to her three horns.
"She" is actually a triceratops horridus skeleton cast that will be a part of the museum's new "Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway" exhibit. The cast exhibit will feature 29 other fossils, 19 color prints and five murals.
There is a debate in the scientific community about whether the triceratops is a separate species or the juvenile of another type of dinosaur, the torosaurus.
The exhibit will feature the work of artist Ray Troll, who created the murals, and paleontologist Kirk Johnson. It runs from Feb. 4 to Sept. 3. Student tickets cost $4.50.
The museum's operations coordinator, Kurt Auffenberg, likes to refer to the complete skeleton cast as a "she," although the sex is unknown.
The model was taken from storage and rolled onto a flatbed truck with the help of nine people Monday. It was then driven about two miles from a warehouse to the museum.
Before this trip, it was in the waiting room of an acute care center in Jacksonville.
Physician and fossil enthusiast Clifford Jeremiah previously owned the cast and gave it to the museum when he retired. However, the model was kept in storage for a couple years because the museum did not have room for her, Auffenberg said.
A triceratops skeleton cast is transported from storage onto a flatbed truck to be taken to the Florida Museum of Natural History on Monday. The dinosaur model will join 29 fossils, 19 color prints and five murals in the museum's new "Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway" exhibit.
