We have evidence suggesting that these animals lived in groups. It’s very reasonable to imagine a scene like this in which you have a juvenile eating a carcass of a duck-billed dinosaur, and other individuals coming and being attracted by the carcass. 

 

If this is going to be a skeleton here representing an edmontosaurus, a duck-billed dinosaur being eaten by the T-Rexes. Is there actually evidence that they ate this type of dinosaur?

 

You have evidence in the shape of bones of duck-billed like edmontosaurus that have tooth marks essentially and those marks, those scratches on the bone coincide well with the shape of the crowns of the teeth of tyrannosaurus Rex. 

 

It’s quite forensic. You’ve actually got gnaw marks on a duck-billed dinosaur. (Yes. Yes.) Fantastic.

 

But the exhibition isn’t only about T-Rex. And amongst the 20 major mounts will be fruitadens, the smallest dinosaur ever to be found in North America. Working from his own illustration, Doyle has created 5 fruitadens.  It’s the first time that this dinosaur has ever been reconstructed. 

 

This is full-grown to scale. It’s a very small dinosaur and one of the smallest in the world. Because its specimen is so fragile and sparse, the information that we can gather, a lot of it is inferred or we’re guessing that it fits with the group of animals based on what information we do have. We don’t have a full skeleton. 

 

By comparing the size of a full limb to a thigh bone, it was clear that fruitadens was bipedal, and by studying close relatives, it’s possible to get a good idea of what a complete skeleton would have looked like. The real challenge was to turn that skeleton into a flesh ate animal. 

 

Musculature can be inferred from the bones. You can see muscle attachments. Every animal has some sort of muscle that pulls the leg back and also something that supports the leg in front, a calf muscle, gastrocnemius or any sort of tendon that will go down to the feet. That’s something that exists on every animal that walks on land.