Bill Wade, Post-Gazette "Jane" in her temporary quarters at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

By Timothy McNulty
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In the much-loved old dinosaur hall at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, known to generations of schoolchildren and "Silence of the Lambs" fans, the dinosaur skeletons were marked with bad body language -- drooping heads and dragging tails -- and jammed into old rooms as cramped as a rush-hour subway platform.

There will be no such restrictions on "Jane," a 21-foot-long new Tyrannosaurus rex -- cast in plastic from a 66 million-year-old specimen -- that the museum unveiled yesterday.

"Jane" will be taking up residence in a new three-story-tall space that will be three times larger, providing room for 16 full dinosaur skeletons to be grouped in the correct historic eras, with revamped explanatory signs and period-type plant and animal life.

Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Sam Stephens, 9, foreground and his brother, Chris, 12, view "Jane," the new dinosaur at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, yesterday. The boys and their parents, Julia and Harry Stephens, of San Jose, Calif., are visiting relatives in Blairsville. Click photo for larger image.

The $36 million dinosaur hall, which the museum has been building the past two years, will be marked by retouched dinosaur skeletons placed in active, attacking poses. In all, about 230 fossils and plants will be on display.

The new "Dinosaurs in Their World" hall will be "the most spectacular dinosaur experience in the nation," museum director Bill DeWalt said, providing display space for the third largest collection of dinosaur fossils in the world.

That is what makes "Jane," the juvenile T. rex cast that made its debut in the Oakland museum's entrance gallery yesterday, special. It is not only a preview for the type of exhibit visitors will see in the new hall, but an appetizer to stave off the building excitement for a "Dinosaurs in Their World" gallery that will not open for another year.

"Jane" is posed in one of the dramatic positions promised for "Dinosaurs in Their World," raised for attack on its hind legs, with its sharp teeth coming down for a kill.

It also comes with child-height signs conveying the dinosaur's age, size and other statistics. (The signs are not computerized as they will be in the new hall and the display is not surrounded by period vegetation.)

It is not known if "Jane" the dinosaur was male or female: The skeleton was named after a benefactor of the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Ill., which found it. The Carnegie and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History have the only casts.

"Jane" on its own should be interesting for dinosaur fanatics. It is a cast of what is thought to be the most complete juvenile T. rex ever found, so its small size is instructive: At 7¹/₂ feet tall, it is half the size of a regular adult, and when alive probably weighed 1,500 pounds. Adults tipped the scales at 12,000 pounds -- about the same as an elephant -- running on their hind legs.

Those legs are rather spindly, so "Jane" looks a bit like a "gangly teenager," said Dr. Matt Lamanna, assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology. It was probably 10 or 11 years old when it died, compared with the 25- to 30-year life span of an adult T. rex.

"People who know their dinosaurs, they're going to recognize some differences. ... Its limbs are a lot longer proportionately than in an adult T. rex. The skull is proportionately longer and lower. ... It's a long low skull in the baby as opposed to a shorter higher skull in the adult.

"It changes quite a bit as the animal grows up and that's what we're hoping to show in the exhibit -- some of the remarkable changes that happened to Tyrannosaurus rex as it matured," Dr. Lamanna said.

Changes at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History also continue. Construction of the new dinosaur hall is basically finished, with the focus now on individual exhibits and dinosaur platforms.

The skeletons of an Allosaurus and Apatosaurus have been cleaned and remounted by Phil Fraley Productions in Paterson, N.J. -- and are sitting in crates in the new dinosaur space -- while an adult T. rex, a Diplodocus and a Dryosaurus are still getting their make-overs.

A $3.5 million education center is being built simultaneously in the bowels of the Oakland facility, and will provide six classrooms, 11,000 square feet of new and renovated space, and a new student entrance to the natural history and art museums.

The educational facilities and the new hall are part of a $150 million Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh capital fund-raising drive.

Museum officials expect attendance to jump at least 40 percent when "Dinosaurs in Their World" opens -- and for it to be the most popular cultural attraction in the Pittsburgh area.

The new hall, said Mr. DeWalt, will be "the first-day visitor attraction for which Pittsburgh has long been searching."