The 150 million year old dinosaur skeleton has arrived in the gardens of Marqueyssac in the Dordogne
The 150 million year old dinosaur skeleton has arrived in the gardens of Marqueyssac in the Dordogne
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The skeleton of the dinosaur purchased for more than a million euros by the Marqueyssac gardens in the Dordogne is being assembled. Several hundred bones to assemble. The dinosaur will be visible from March 21.
It took a full day for the dinosaur assemblers and a curator to bring this “medium-sized allosaurus”, 2.25 metres high and 7.50 metres long, back to life. The skeleton was dismantled in more than three or four hundred parts. “We didn’t count,” admits Nicolas Tourment, an expert in paleontology.
After being exposed for three months in the Caverne du Pont d’Arc in Ardèche, the Kan dinosaur took refuge in the former greenhouse of the Jardins de Marqueyssac, in Vézac, where the peacocks were previously fed.
“There has been a lot of work done in record time,” admits Jean Lemoussu, Chief Gardener. The project was validated at the end of January and work began in early February. The allosaurus now sits behind a window in a brand new room overlooking the Dordogne valley.
“It’s magnificent, it has a breathtaking view here…”, smiles Maria Gonzalez, curator at the Montmartre Museum in Paris and exhibition manager at the Caverne du Pont d’Arc. “I think he’s going to be very happy here, he communicates very well with nature.”
“A rare skeleton”
The dinosaur’s head was transported and mounted separately from the rest of the skeleton. “Too fragile and too heavy”, it will be exposed right next door. It is a molded head that rests on Kan’s precious skeleton, whose particularity is to be almost entirely of origin: “70 to 75% of the fossils are true, it is even 95% as far as the head is concerned,” Maria Gonzalez explains. “I think it’s a very good quality allosaurus, it’s very rare to find a suit like this.”