Drivers on the TransCanada Highway will catch a peculiar site on Thursday as a 43 foot long replica of a mosasaur will make its 1,200 kilometre journey from Dinosaur Valley Studios to a museum in Manitoba.
“I’m sure we’re going to raise a few eyebrows,” said company owner Frank Hadfield, who will drive the replica of the ancient marine reptile to the Canadian Fossil Discover Centre in Morden.
The mosasaur is the largest fleshed out creature Dinosaur Valley Studios has ever built. It weighs up to two tonnes, has a six-foot long skull and flippers 11 feet long and eight feet high. The actual mosasaur is estimated to have weighed 12 to 15 tonnes, about twice the weight of a Tyrannosaurus rex or an adult elephant.
The most unique feature of the mosasaur is a double row of flanged teeth on its palate that would oscillate while eating. Its lower jaw was hinged so it could splay to the side, similar to snakes.
“Once it got a hold of you there was only one way to go – down the hatch,” said Hadfield.
The studio previously molded and cast a skeleton of a smaller mosasaur for the museum and shortly after it was installed the Canadian Fossil Discover Centre requested this true-to-life reconstruction.
“We based it on that skeleton and reconstructed it as closely as possible to what the animal probably would have looked like. We had extensive knowledge on the anatomy and physiology so we were the go-to people,” said Hadfield.
“The best representation of it was actually in Jurassic World. The mosasaur is the animal that leaps out of the ocean and eats a shark – it’s sort of the hero of the move at the end.”
The mosasaur skeleton in Morden, nicknamed Bruce, is the the Canadian Fossil Discover Centre’s flagship specimen and this replica will be placed outside the museum as an attraction.
Hadfield said CTV will be tracking the replica’s journey along the way to Morden. It leaves Drumheller early Thursday morning.
