Where: Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park
When: March 11 – September 4, 2023
Cost: Tickets include General Admission to museum: Adult ROM + T.rex $35, Child ROM + T.rex $21, Senior/Student/Youth ROM + T.rex $29 and can be purchased at rom.on.ca. Book ahead to reserve your spot.
Details: Stalking in the imagination of every child is the great Tyrannosaurus rex, the tyrant lizard king of dinosaurs. This culturally omnipresent dino will come to life at ROM in T. rex: The Ultimate Predator presented by Desjardins. Visitors will feast on this spectacular new exhibition from the American Museum of Natural History that features more than 40 models and casts, many full-sized and towering over guests.
For guests of all ages, T. rex is an adventure of imagination and exploration. Captivating young minds, filled with ideas of what it would be like to have lived with the dinosaurs, and guiding through the epic journeys of evolution and scientific discovery, this exhibition will thrill and engage all who dare enter.
Just how did T. rex get so big, so bad and so famous? This exhibition will answer those questions and other fascinating queries about the tyrannosaur family through impressive displays including large-scale video projections, an exhilarating virtual reality experience and plenty of hands-on activities for kids to engage with.
Despite what people may think, the full tyrannosaur story includes dozens of different species spanning over 100 million years of evolution, with the best-known -T. Rex – only appearing just before it and the other dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the Earth by a devastating asteroid impact. With this exhibition, visitors will also learn about many types of tyrannosaurs of the superfamily Tyrannosauroidea that lived between 167 and 66 million years ago and roamed across five continents.
In the ROM Spotlight section of the exhibition, visitors will dig into the process of paleontological fieldwork while viewing the toothy jawbone from a giant Daspletosaurus, a close cousin of T. rex, unearthed just last summer by Dr. Evans and crew from a site near the hamlet of Manyberries, Alberta. This space will also reveal how ROM fossil preparators do the meticulous work of digging up and revealing the hidden fossil treasures as they prepare the bones for study or display.
While exploring the exhibition, visitors will confront a life-sized animation of T. rex and encounter full-scale models of a T. rex during different growth phases, from a fluffy helpless T. rex hatchling to a four-year-old juvenile and finally as a massive, chomping adult T. rex.
The evolution of T. rex will be further illustrated by real fossil specimens from Canada on display for visitors to study. In addition to the Daspletosaurus, there will be fossil skulls of an Albertosaurus sarcophagus and a Gorgosaurus libratus. A highlight exhibition will be a stunning real fossil T. rex skull from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, one of only two skeletons ever found in Alberta, with its rare and remarkable black colour due to the manganese it absorbed as it underwent fossilization. This exhibition is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (amnh.org).
More Info: rom.on.ca/en