Museum rebuilds 25-metre sauropod skeleton found in Wyoming

Over the coming months, the Dinosaur Museum Altmühltal near Denkendorf will reconstruct the 25-metre original skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur, BR reported on Monday. The plant-eating sauropod lived more than 150 million years ago in what is now Wyoming in the United States.

The bones currently lie on a sloping platform at the museum, where Verena Jahnke and her colleagues are assembling them like a “large 3D puzzle without instructions”. Jahnke, a 42-year-old member of the museum’s palaeontology team, estimates that up to 80 per cent of the fossilised bones are original. Missing pieces are being reproduced using a 3D printer and incorporated into the skeleton.

Raimund Albersdörfer discovered the dinosaur in Wyoming in 2008. The palaeontologist is a co-founder of the Dinosaur Museum Altmühltal, which is marking its 10th anniversary this year. Albersdörfer and his team recovered the first bones, while a group of Swiss palaeontologists excavated the dinosaur in subsequent years. Preparing the bones has already taken about 15,000 hours.

The skeleton belongs to the Natural History Museum of the University of Zurich. As part of a cooperation, it is being reconstructed for the first time and will be assembled lying down at the museum until around the end of this year. Visitors can watch the work and follow its progress.

Next year, the museum’s technical team plans to build a support structure and raise the 25-metre dinosaur. The animal, named “Arapahoe”, belonged to the sauropod family and lived to the age of 16, according to junior museum director Nils-Lennart Völker. Researchers do not yet know why it died.

The skeleton shows three injuries, none of which were life-threatening. One hardened area on the long tail may have formed after a fracture, perhaps during a fight with a T. rex, Jahnke speculated. Experts hope that further work on the skeleton will reveal more about the animal. Several scientific studies are also planned, including research into the sauropod’s diet.

Jahnke, who trained as a carpenter, said she was fascinated by working with fossils that had once belonged to a living animal. The fossils she prepares are 156 million years old, she said.

The museum also displays a life-sized model of a long-necked dinosaur outdoors. It uses the example of “Arapahoe” to explain how the discovery was made, how the excavation was organised and how bones are separated from the surrounding rock, known as the matrix. The dinosaur was given its name as a mark of respect for the Indigenous people on whose tribal territory it was found.