The First T. Rex #973

My two grandfathers and Barnum Brown made history together when Barnum was allowed to dig for dinosaurs on land where my grandfather McDonald lived in Montana. During a dig starting in 1902 and ending in 1905, the remains of the first T rex in the United States were unearthed and history was changed forever. The land where grandfather lived is the type site for the type specimen of the Tyrannosaurus rex. This skeleton is not the largest of the rex skeletons ever to be found, but it is the first found in America. When the museum put the pieces together they officially named the huge beast Tyrannosaurus rex, the Tyrant King. It was what scientists call "the holotype" specimen of a new species, the first against which all others are compared. My other grandfather was instrumental in building the railroad so the train could transport the dinosaur bones to New York to be assembled and displayed in the American Museum of Natural History's Dinosaur Hall in December 1906.