WhileAustralia’sstate museums have a great reputation for
the quality of their displays, there’s still one big thing missing
from all our galleries of past life: a dinosaur skeleton. Not a
replica, but a real one. Not one museum in Australia has ever
mounted a real dinosaur skeleton for public display. Instead
we mount replicas that have been restored and modiied to
show what the creature might have looked like.
Real dinosaur skeletons are a true thing of awe and amaze-
ment to behold. The Tyrannosaurusat the American Museum
of Natural History in New York inspired the young Steven Jay
Gould to want to become a palaeontologist.
In 2011 I worked as part of team that created a
new dinosaur gallery for the Los Angeles County
Museum (LACM) in California. We mounted
some 25 dinosaur skeletons into life-like poses, 23
of them largely composed of real skeletons. The
gallery cost around US$14 million, and much of
that went on preparation of the fossils and creating
armatures to mount the bones so they could be
easily removed for study or conservation – and to
withstand the earthquakes that LA is famous for.
In Australia we have one articulated real dinosaur
skeleton on display, Kunbarrasaurus(based on a
specimen erroneously called Minmi) at the Queens-
land Museum in Brisbane. This small animal meas-
uring ~3 metres is displayed as it was found after
preparation.
But we lack any dinosaur mounted from real
bones into a life-like position, as is routinely found
in nearly every North American natural history
museum. Some would argue we lack the specimens
or resources to do that kind of thing here, but it’s
not true. We lack the kind of commitment and
resource allocation to do it from our state govern-
ment leaders.
Several Australian museums have mounted
replica skeletons of Muttaburrasaurus, an 8-metre plant-eating
ornithopod from Queensland. While the bones have been
prepped up and cast, many like the skull are restored to estimate
their life-like shape. To mount an authentic posture for such
a specimen would need further reinforcement of the original
bones, plus a carefully designed armature to support the bones.
Other possible candidates for a real mounted dinosaur would
currently have to be made from less than 50% of the skeleton
augmented with replica bones to complete the mount. The
large sauropod Wintonotitanis known from near-complete
front limbs, shoulder girdle, back and tail vertebrae and part of
the hip. Much new material of this giant and its cousinDiaman-
tinasaurusis currently being prepared. Perhaps soon one will
be a suitable candidate for the full mounted treatment.
In Australia we spend a fraction of what any mid-sized
museum in the USA would spend on such a gallery. An average
large new exhibition gallery in an Australian state museum
might costs A$2–5 million, not US$12–20 million like the
LACM’s three new galleries in its recent redevelopment. The
LACM did all this while working from an annual operating
budget far less than the two biggest Australian state museums,
albeit with some good old US philanthropy thrown in.I hope one day we will get to see a real dinosaur mounted in
an Australian museum. Which will be the irst?
Whichever it is, it will certainly reap the big beneits of
increased attendance and shop sales, as the LACM did. Just
2 years after opening the new fossil mammal and dinosaur
galleries, it doubled its attendances, raised ticket prices, shop sales
were up by 80% more, and it greatly improved its bottom line.
Staing increased and salaries increased. Some say it was a
dinosaur-led economic recovery.MAY 2016|| 43John Long is Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University, and current
President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.THE FOSSIL FILE John Long
When Will Australia Get Its First Real Mounted Dinosaur?
Australian museums don’t display any dinosaurs mounted from real bones into a life-like position.
Allosaurusand Stegosaurus in life-like poses at the Los Angeles County
Museum’s dinosaur gallery. Both are real skeleton mounts, which is something
we lack in Australian museums.