Canadian museum discovers barosaurus; in its own building

This video from Canada is called Royal Ontario Museum.

Reuters reports:

Canadian museum makes rare find — in own building

Wed 14 Nov 2007, 1:34 GMT

TORONTO – A Canadian museum that went hunting for a dinosaur skeleton, discovered it already had the massive creature buried in its own collection.

The 24-metre (80-foot) long Barosaurus had been obtained by Toronto‘s Royal Ontario Museum in 1962 and forgotten about over the years, the museum said on Tuesday.

An employee searching for a dinosaur skeleton in the United States read an old article that said the museum already had exactly what he was looking for.

Because the ROM did not have the space to display the assembled creature when the skeleton was obtained, the bones were divided among collections, but without a note saying they belonged to a single animal.

“When all the parts were pulled together we realized just how much of the animal the ROM actually had, the better part of a skeleton of a rare, giant dinosaur,” associate curator David Evans said in a statement.

The museum, which recently expanded and now has the space, plans to put the huge skeleton on display in December.

See also here.

The barosaurus itself, after a wait underground of 150 million years, will not have minded the extra 45 years of non-display in the museum much.

Update 12 December 2007: here.

15 December 2007: here.

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