Smithsonian interest

The Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM) has something unique to share with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Scientists there are currently developing a new exhibit called Putting Dinosaurs In Their Place and wanted to include in the exhibit a rare Tyrannosaurus rex coprolite deposited over 65 million years ago in what is now southwest Saskatchewan.

A coprolite is fossilized dinosaur feces. This T. rex coprolite is being used to understand more about the biology of the animal. Bone fragments visible in the coprolite are shattered and still angular, instead of being rounded and etched by acid, which suggests that the meal didn't spend much time in the stomach. Analysis of the bone fragments and comparison with those from other dinosaurs known from Saskatchewan at that time suggest the animal consumed was a juvenile, likely a duck-billed dinosaur, or a horned dinosaur such as Triceratops.

"What makes this specimen unique is that we can clearly identify it as coming from a meat-eating dinosaur, and the only species of that type of dinosaur living in the area at the end of the Cretaceous Period that was large enough to produce this coprolite was Tyrannosaurus rex," Palaeontologist and RSM Director Harold Bryant said. "The Smithsonian Institution came to the RSM for a replica of the coprolite for its new exhibit because we can associate it with T.rex."

"This remarkable coprolite attributed to T. rex from Saskatchewan provides wonderful confirmation that this was indeed a giant meat-eater, as had been inferred from its teeth," Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History Dr. Hans Sues said. "We want to show our visitors that paleontologists do not just work with fossil bones and teeth but can also draw on other lines of evidence such as coprolites and tracks to reconstruct the life and times of ancient backboned animals."

The Smithsonian exhibit is scheduled to open in 2014. There will be recognition of the RSM's contribution and that a part of Saskatchewan's prehistoric past is on display. Meanwhile, RSM scientists continue to research Saskatchewan's rich fossil history both in the field, and in the RSM labs at the T.rex Discovery Centre in Eastend and in Regina. Through an exciting joint project with the University of Regina, scientists are also studying fossils using the Canadian Light Source (Synchrotron) in Saskatoon.

To learn more about on-going work in the field of paleontology and other areas of research at the RSM, visit the museum in Regina, the T. Rex Discovery Centre in Eastend and online at www.royalsaskmuseum.ca/research-collections.

To read blogs from RSM scientists and researchers, check out www.royalsaskmuseum.ca/blog.

To visit the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History online, go to www.mnh.si.edu/.