
How To Build A Dinosaur
Three T. Rex skeletons, a juvenile, a sub-adult, and an adult, go on display at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, and Alice Roberts walks through the finished exhibit to see what the lineup actually shows about how the animal grew up. Paleontologists talk through the evidence behind each mount: bones, growth rings, and comparative anatomy used to work out size and proportion at each stage, since no single skeleton survives complete enough to tell the whole story on its own. The exhibit's logic is comparative rather than narrative, setting the three ages side by side so visitors can see the jump in skull size, limb proportion, and bulk between a young T. Rex and a fully grown one. Roberts presses the scientists on where the science is solid and where it is still reconstruction, filling gaps with inference from related species and fossil trackways. The result is less a monster reveal than a case study in how museums build a life history out of scattered, incomplete remains.