First Extinction, Now This

Even 65 million years after the disastrous end of the Mesozoic era, there’s still no end of woe for dinosaurs. Even the Science Core, Science B-57, “Dinosaurs and Their Relatives,” couldn’t avoid another sudden calamity when a replicated tyrannosaurus rex skull ordered for lab was damaged in transport last week.

The life-size replica, complete with hollows, teeth and fossil-colored paint, was en route from Los Angeles when someone walked on top of its carrying crate and fell through. The skull had been welded onto a metal stand, and the impact sent a metal pole straight through the model. Luckily, the T-Rex skull has so many natural hollows that the pole simply went through the holes. The unfortunate interloper also was unharmed. Professor of Geology and of Biology Charles Marshall, who teaches Dinosaurs, received word of the accident before the shipment arrived and was relieved to see that the skull had survived the worst with only a few broken teeth and a slightly displaced jaw. “[The damage] is not enormous, thank God,” he says. “It’s best to say that it’s chipped in a number of places.”

Marshall ordered the skull from Valley Anatomical in Los Angeles, a company that specializes in making casts of fossils. In his years teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles, Marshall was a regular customer of the company, always ordering from Mary Odano, a 79-year-old cast-maker who formerly worked for the Natural History Museum in L.A. before she retired to making replicas. “She’s great,” Marshall raves. After the accident, Odano immediately sent along a new set of teeth and spray paint glue to touch up “the cosmetics,” as Marshall puts it. The task of repairing the damage, however, falls to none but Marshall himself.

After the skull is fully reassembled and examined in the Science B-57 lab, Marshall hopes that it will find a permanent home in the Science Center as a display. “Harvard’s paid for it,” he says. “It might as well be placed as prominently as possible.” After all, for all the suffering of dinosaurs, it’s the least Harvard could do.