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Invasion of the dinosaur
November/December 2005
photograph ©Mark Ostow
Early on September 22, a heavy-duty crane gently lifted a 7,350-pound, 21-foot-long bronze replica of Torosaurus latus, a horned dinosaur that became extinct 65 million years ago. A festive crowd of about 100 watched workers move the beast from a flatbed trailer to a 70-ton granite pedestal on the front lawn of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. One of the onlookers was nervous. "I wasn't sure it would actually fit," says Michael Anderson, the museum's chief preparator and sculptor of the Torosaurus statue.
The dinosaur, a relative of Triceratops, was discovered in the late nineteenth century by Yale paleontologist O. C. Marsh, one of the premier fossil hunters of his era. In 1999, when the Peabody sought a suitable creature to greet museum visitors, Torosaurus was chosen. Anderson has spent much of the past three years bringing the dinosaur to life. "When it was set down on the rock with about a quarter inch to spare on each side," he says, "I was really flying."
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