Though Jurassic Park may just be a Hollywood concept, Victoria residents can still come face-to-face with the remains of prehistoric creatures in their own city.
Dino Lab Incorporated, at 43 and 45 Erie Street, unveiled two new projects that will be on display at the museum: the return of Victoria the T-Rex and the four-year art-meets-paleontology project by two of their employees called 'Let Bygones be Bygones.'
Victoria the T-Rex is one of the most complete T-Rex skeletons ever found with more than half of her bones still in good condition. She was found in South Dakota in 2011, and restored over three years at the Dino Lab in James Bay.
"She was actually travelling around the world," said Kalene Lillicot, an administrator at the lab, explaining that Victoria has travelled to museums in South Korea, the U.S. and Australia.
"Most recently she was in Melbourne at the Melbourne Museum and that one was pretty special because we have another triceratops that's displayed there, Horridus, and at one point he was the most complete triceratops in the world. So the two of them kind of got reunited and that was a pretty special display."
Joining Victoria, the art project Let Bygones be Bygones features "a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops skeleton sitting down at a giant bistro table, over a cup of tea drank from bone china, working out their differences," noted a news release from the lab.
Over four years, Dino Lab employees Ry and Nate Williams worked on the project, which is inspired by their late grandmother's attitude toward others and her rose-patterned bone china tea set.
"It's this idea of T-Rex and triceratops were thought to have been mortal enemies more or less B次元官网网址� at least that's how pop culture likes to spin it. And this is just a little bit of an ode to the fact that if we can make T-Rex and triceratops sit down, have a cup of tea together and let the past go, maybe we should all take a little bit of a page out of their books," said Lillicot.
The Dino Lab restores fossils by removing rock and reconstructing missing sections with 3D prints, then building metal armatures to support the specimens for eventual museum use. They also offer tours to the public where visitors can touch and hold the fossils, and even work on the fossils.
For more information or to book a tour, visit www.dinolabinc.ca.
