T. rex: The Ultimate Predator

[AMNH logo unfolds across an extreme close-up of Tyrannosaurus rex’s face.]

[MENACING, HEAVY BREATHING OVER OMINOUS DRONE]

MARK NORELL (Macauley Curator, Division of Paleontology): When people hear the word “Tyrannosaurus rex,” they think, like, big…

[Extreme close-up of T. rex teeth.]

NORELL: …vicious…

[Close up of large T. rex feet stomping by.]

NORELL: …apex predator.

[Animated T. rex with hair-like feathers walks in profile.]

NORELL: But I like to change people’s preconceptions.

[LILTING MUSIC PLAYS]

[A fluffy T. rex hatchling walks towards the viewer and turns its head inquisitively. Text reads “T. rex, the Ultimate Predator.”]

NORELL: Welcome to the family.

[Curator Mark Norell speaks in the Paleontology collection, in front of a T. rex skull]

NORELL: Tyrannosaurs first appear 150 million years or so ago.

[Animated adult T. rex walks.]

NORELL: T. rex was the most advanced, the most specialized and the biggest tyrannosaur of all. As a paleontologist, one of the big hard things to look at has always been growth.

[Norell speaks in the Paleontology collection. Text identifies him as Mark Norell, Curator, T. rex: The Ultimate Predator.]

NORELL: Because baby dinosaurs and young dinosaurs are just so incredibly rare. And largely that has to do with their bones are extraordinarily fragile.

[Various shots of the tiny bones of hatchling and juvenile dinosaur fossils.]

NORELL: So, it’s only been in the recent maybe 20 years when more and more juvenile and baby dinosaurs have sort of been found. Which we’re getting a window into what the early life histories of these animals was.

[Side angle view of Norell speaking in the Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: Whenever, like, we work on any fossil group…

[Camera pans across life-sized T. rex model in progress. An artist works on a ladder, shaping the animal.]

NORELL: …and we’re making models and that kind of thing, there is a good deal of speculation.

[An artist airbrush paints the mouth of the adult T. rex model, while referencing a photo of a crocodile’s open mouth. Other reference images of birds and reptiles are seen in the modelers’ workshop.]

NORELL: But it’s informed speculation from looking at closely related animals.

[Three artists sit in their studio space. Text labels them as the “T. rex Model-Making Team.” Jason Brougham on the left side of the screen, is identified as “Senior Principal Preparator.”]

JASON BROUGHAM (Senior Principal Preparator, Exhibitions Department): I think this is the first time we’ve ever made the same species of dinosaur at three different stages of its growth and development.

[Woman sculpts mouth of adult T. rex in clay. She is identified in text as “Rebecca Meah, Senior Principal Preparator.”]

REBECCA MEAH (Senior Principal Preparator, Exhibitions Department): I’m assigned to make the adult T. rex.

[Artists sit in their studio workspace, with models in progress behind them. On the right, Hannah Rawe is identified as “Senior Principal Preparator.”]

HANNAH RAWE (Senior Principal Preparator, Exhibitions Department): I was assigned first to make the hatchlings. And then Jason and I decided to switch…

[Rawe examines her model of juvenile T. rex head on a workbench.]

RAWE: …because I was more interested in making the four-year-old T. rex.

[Brougham adjusts fluffy covering on hatchling model.]

BROUGHAM: And I wanted to do the babies. In our show, we’re going to have the hatchling be very densely fluffy, sort of like down feathers.

[Artists’ reference images of modern animals and dinosaur poses are pinned on the wall in their studio. Camera moves in on one image that comes to life with footage of baby ostriches.]

BROUGHAM: Sort of like what you see on a baby ostrich or a baby emu.

[Norell speaks in the Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: From all the inferential evidence we have, these animals would have hatched out of an egg…

[Time lapse footage of kiwi chick hatching out of egg.]

NORELL: …just the way a modern chick does.

[Animated close-up of T. rex hatchling’s face as it blinks and looks around. It has large eyes, tiny, needle-like teeth, and filamentous feathers all over its body.]

NORELL: They would have been covered with a fluffy covering. It just would have looked like a really weird looking big bird when it came out of the egg.

[Norell speaks in the Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: We don’t really have any direct evidence for parental care in Tyrannosaurus rex.

[Reference images scattered on desk. One by one, they come to life with moving footage. First, an emu stands up, revealing a clutch of bright blue eggs.]

NORELL: However, we do have some indirect evidence.

[An ostrich sits near its large eggs in the sand. An adult cassowary guards a group of young birds.]

NORELL: Most living birds, including, you know, primitive birds like ostriches and emus and cassowaries, they have some level of parental care, whether it’s nest guarding or bringing food to their young.

[A crocodile slides from the bank into the water. Its babies sun themselves in the background.]

NORELL: Similarly, crocodiles guard their nests.

[Norell speaks in the Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: So, at least at the nest guarding level, we would predict, then, that tyrannosaurs would have the same kind of thing.

[A fluffy T. rex hatchling looks inquisitively at the viewer, then looks up, revealing small, needle-like teeth.]

NORELL: When a little tyrannosaur was born, the teeth were a lot different than the adults.

[A Komodo dragon opens its mouth on a beach.]

NORELL: In lots of living animals, especially big reptiles like Komodo dragons…

[A young Komodo dragon sits amid leaves on a high tree branch.]

NORELL: …they also go through an ecological shift of what they eat from the time that they’re hatchlings and juveniles…

[Amid a group of reference images pinned to the wall, one comes to life, showing an adult Komodo dragon pacing along a beach.]

NORELL: …to full adulthood. They have different diets.

[Close-up of juvenile Komodo dragon.]

NORELL: So, the smallest ones feed on insects and small reptiles.

[Group of adult Komodo dragons eats the carcass of a large hoofed mammal.]

NORELL: But then when they’re adults they can even take down large animals, like animals that weigh almost as much as they do.

[Norell speaks in the Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: As adults, the primary way in which the big tyrannosaurs hunted…

[Close-up of T. rex mouth and large, pointed teeth.]

NORELL: …is that they have these really deeply rooted, very stout teeth.

[3D model of T. rex skull, with musculature indicated. Mouth is first open and then snaps closed.]

NORELL: So, they were able to bite into things with such force…

[Norell speaks in Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: …that it wasn’t like a lion or a leopard. They would actually cause the thing to explode because they’re able to bite so hard, and their teeth could just go through bone. They could crush everything.

[Close up of model T. rex juvenile teeth.]

RAWE: You know, you think of the teeth as being crescent moon-shaped…

[Close up of artist gluing teeth onto juvenile T. rex face.]

RAWE: …but in fact, it’s not as much of a curve.

[Rawe fits teeth onto juvenile T. rex. Reference image shows T. rex with closed mouth and teeth jutting out in an overbite.]

RAWE: I decided to sculpt the four-year-old T. rex with his mouth closed.

[T. rex artists speak in their workshop.]

RAWE: Because I just kind of thought it was maybe more interesting as a study of nature…

[Rawe sculpts juvenile T. rex model.]

RAWE: …that, you know, the majority of the T. rex’s time spent alive, I’m sure, was with their mouth closed. And I’m actually working off of a really new discovery, and very little fossil evidence.

[Animated adult T. rex walks. Camera cuts to close-up shot of arms moving.]

NORELL: There’s been a lot of speculation about what Tyrannosaurus rex used its miniscule arms for when it was an adult.

[Animated hatchling walks in side view. Its long fluffy tail moves with each step, and its arms appear longer to its body size than on the adult.]

NORELL: But when a Tyrannosaurus rex first hatches, the arms would have appeared quite a bit longer than they do in an adult.

[Norell speaks in Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: Basically, the body grows faster than the arms do. So, it’s not like the arms diminish in size.

[Close-up of arm on adult T. rex model in-progress, then wider shot showing how tiny the arm is, relative to the full body size.]

NORELL: They just don’t grow as fast as the rest of the body does.

[Artists speak in their workspace.]

RAWE: One of the main things I think that we sort of used each other’s reference points on were the hands and feet.

[Reference images of emu and ostrich feet are taped to a work table.]

MEAH: We copied an emu-slash-ostrich.

[Model T. rex foot sculpted in clay.]

MEAH: If you look at, like, the footprint left by a T. rex…

[Close-up of emu’s foot. Shot of emu walking in grass.]

MEAH: …it looks almost identical to an emu footprint. So-

[Artists speak in their workspace.]

BROUGHAM: But much bigger.

MEAH: But much bigger, yeah.

[Illustration of juvenile T. rex, its body covered in striped patterns of feathers.]

NORELL: When the animal was young, it was a really kind of, like, gangly animal.

[Norell speaks in Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: And it would have had a much more cursorial gait, meaning it was a fast runner. As opposed to the adult…

[Tiger hides in bushes, moving only its ear.]

NORELL: …which was probably just a stealth predator. I mean, that’s the way tigers, for instance, hunt today and stuff.

[Norell speaks in Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: Is that they’re not like cheetahs. They don’t go running forever and run stuff down.

[Pinned to the artists’ worshop wall are a sequence of images showing a tiger chasing down and catching a wild boar.]

NORELL: They hide in the bushes and they’re ambush predators.

[Extreme close-up of adult T. rex face and skin.]

NORELL: A lot of people really wonder what the skin of Tyrannosaurus rex looked like.

[A large Komodo dragon walks along a trail.]

[LIGHT, BOUNCING MARIMBA MUSIC]

NORELL: And a lot of them equate the skin of a tyrannosaur to be just like the skin of a lizard or a snake.

[Norell speaks in Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: And they were scaled, but scaled in a very different kind of way.

[Close-up of a tortoise, chewing on grass.]

NORELL: The skin would be more like a leathery covering—what the leg of a turtle looks like…

[Pinned to the artists’ wall, a close-up of chicken feet comes to life, as the chickens scratch in the dirt.]

NORELL: …or even the foot of a chicken.

[Norell speaks in Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: Also, you know, we feel that even adult tyrannosaurs were feathered.

[Illustration of Yutyrannus, a tyrannosaur with large teeth and claws, but completely covered in feathers and sporting a fluffy tail.]

NORELL: There’s an animal from China called Yutyrannus…

[Images of Yutyrannus fossils, showing tyrannosaur-looking skull, and tail with feathery streaks evident surrounding the vertebrae.]

NORELL: …which is a fairly close relative to Tyrannosaurus rex, and spectacular fossils of it show that the animal’s completely covered with feathers.

[Artists speak in their workspace.]

BROUGHAM: When we don’t have specimens that preserve the skin texture, we have to sort of infer what it could be.

[Brougham sculpts hatchling model. Meah adjusts clay model of adult T. rex head. Rawe glues eye in juvenile T. rex model.]

BROUGHAM: For each model, there’s a few choices that you have and you run them past the curator and see if they think they’re plausible.

MEAH: I think where we like to do our best work…

[Artists speak in their workspace.]

MEAH: …is making it convincing to the audience.

[Norell speaks in Paleontology collection.]

NORELL: Since its discovery, Tyrannosaurus rex has been…

[Time lapse footage of T. rex fossil skeleton being assembled in exhibition space.] 

NORELL: …the most iconic, the biggest, the meanest, probably by far the best-known dinosaur. And you know, we want to give people a very different look and appreciation for what a remarkable animal Tyrannosaurus rex was… 

[Animated adult T. rex lopes into frame.]

[LARGE SNORTS AND SNIFFS] 

NORELL: …and the evolutionary steps that its ancestors went through to get there.

[Animated T. rex notices viewer, and chomps down, its mouth engulfing the screen.] 

[Credits roll.]

[Two pairs of blue gloves appear and flex fingers in an industrial-looking white space with visible dinosaur fossils.]

[Two logos appear: 150 years of the American Museum of Natural History, and VIVE.]

VIVIAN TRAKINSKI (Director of Science Visualization, American Museum of Natural History): I think one of the opportunities of virtual reality is to really mix the

[Vivian Trakinski is shown in front of a fully fleshed out model of Tyrannosaurus rex, then in profile.]

science and the magic.

[SOARING MUSIC]

[A long-haired woman with VR headset is shown turning around. A black-and-white, pencil-sketch animation of the ceiling in the Museum’s dinosaur halls appears, with hanging lamps, as a flurry of vertebrae fossils flutter through, as though leaves blowing in the wind. Another person wearing a VR headset is shown with controllers in each hand. Nicholas Bartzokas is shown in the gallery.]

NICHOLAS BARTZOKAS (Associate Director of Science Visualization, American Museum of Natural History): VR is unique in that it can really immerse a person completely. They can get a sense of the scale of something.

[A full-color animation of a roaring Tyrannosaurus rex in a Cretaceous environment, followed by a view of three players with headsets moving around in the gallery.] 

That's really important for a T. rex because T. rex is very big, and you really feel like you're there.

[A close-up on one player in a headset turning around.]

You feel like you're in the Cretaceous period, face to face with the T. rex,

[Full-color animation of the Tyrannosaurus rex in its environment, roaring and sniffing at camera. Then Nicholas Bartzokas back on camera, then a birds-eye view of the full-color animation of Tyrannosaurus rex in a leafy environment.]

and there's just no replacing that level of immersion.

[Chris Chin is shown in the gallery.] 

CHRIS CHIN (Executive Director of VR Content, HTC Vive): We are all about bringing VR into education whether it be schools, libraries, and museums, we really feel that bringing this immersive technology and VR into these spaces.

[Close-up on the long-haired woman in a VR headset laughing.]

allows you to visualize, experience art, science, history, and culture

[Pencil-sketch animation of the Museum’s fossil hall, with full-color fossil bones of the leg and hip flying into place, then the vertebrae flying into place.]

in ways that you could never experience before.

[Player wearing headset is shown in the gallery looking down and lowering and raising arms with controllers.]

[Title sequence: T. Rex: Skeleton Crew. An interactive multiplayer virtual reality experience.]

[Chris Chin shown in the gallery.]

CHIN: When you think about natural history museums,

[Museum facade on Central Park West, with cars moving down the street, followed by close-up on the central banner, which reads: T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR]

you think only of the American Museum of Natural History. It's the most iconic institution out there.

[Pan across the Allosaurus fossil mount in the Museum’s Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, a grand space with tall ceilings, detailed ceilings, and colorful murals, followed by a sweeping shot to show the tall neck of the Barosaurus.]

[A VR player wearing a headset in an office space with posters.]

TRAKINSKI: We've been experimenting with VR for a couple of years now, knowing that it's something

[Wider shot showing VR player with colleagues on computers, monitoring the screen and watching the player, then Vivian Trakinski shown in the gallery.]

that visitors were very interested in and knowing that it's a great opportunity

[Computer animations of fossils, and close-up views of moving skeletal parts, appear on screen.]

for us to engage them in the three- and four-dimensional datasets that our scientists are working in.

[Vivian Trakinski shown in the exhibition gallery.]

When HTC Vive approached us for a potential collaboration,

[Chris Chin is shown speaking while Vivian Trakinski continues to narrate.]

we saw it as a real opportunity to move from prototyping and experimentation

[Creative team around a conference table, in active discussion.]

into full implementation.

[Close up on developer nodding and working at a computer, with another team member in the background.]

And so together,

[Vivian Trakinski shown in front of the T. rex model in the gallery.]

through this collaboration, we've been able to create a cutting-edge,

[Three players with headsets shown playing in the gallery.]

multiplayer, interactive, wireless experience.

[Close up on one of the players, in a headset, walking and raising arms with controllers in hand, then another wide shot of the three players lifting their arms to “place” fossils.]

BARTZOKAS: Social experiences bring families together. That's why they come to the Museum.

[Nick Bartzokas speaks to camera, with a poster of T. rex in the background. 

So, to be able to bring them into VR, 

[Scene from the pencil-sketch animation of the VR, of the three player avatars in hats and shirts working on adjacent platforms with various fossil pieces.]

and not isolate them and, instead, allow them to see each other and

[From point of view of one of the players, looking at another player’s avatar waving their floating glove “hello.” Then, a view of the three players with headsets playing in the gallery.] 

experience that Cretaceous world together—that really is something

[Close-up on one player in a headset raising her arms above her head.]

that we strive for.

[Pencil-sketch animation of the room, with fossils swooping through past an avatar and a fossil skull.] 

TRAKINSKI: So, once we had a creative concept, we worked very closely with the scientists

[Profile of Vivian Trakinski in the gallery, then a view of the VR players with headsets nodding to a developer who’s watching them play. One player gestures as if describing some detail of the scene she is watching. Developer looks back at her screen.]

with our T. rex model to ensure the accuracy of the placement of the bones, for instance.

[View of the pencil-sketch animation with a full-color T. rex skull, replaced by a shot of the model T. rex skull in the gallery in a near one-to-one match. A pan around the T. rex skeleton model, then a shot of the avatars in the VR experience clicking bones into place as the skull snaps its teeth.]

MARK NORELL (Division Chair and Macaulay Curator, Division of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History): The T. rex in the VR experience is really the same T. rex you have here.

[Mark Norell, facing camera, in the gallery.]

So, this model back here is kind of the latest and greatest,

[Pans of the T. rex model, with close-ups on the open mouth and slobbery-looking teeth.]

and we feel by far the most accurate T. rex

[Mark Norell shown in the gallery. ]

model that's ever- reconstruction that's ever been developed.

[View of pencil-sketch animation with gloves picking up large vertebra fossils and placing them on a column. Vivian Trakinski shown in gallery.]

TRAKINSKI: So, visitors will get to spend a couple of minutes actually assembling a T. rex skeleton and then 

[Pencil-sketch animation showing an avatar dressed in red hat and blue shirt picking up fossil teeth and snapping them into the skull.]

thanks to the magic of virtual reality we can fully assemble that entire V. rex

[Small fossil pieces swoop in towards a nearly completed T. rex skeleton in the pencil-sketch animation of the gallery, with bones snapping into place one by one as the skeleton continues to take shape.]

skeleton and it will come to life and the visitors will be transported from a

[Vivian Trakinski shown in gallery.]

museum hall to the paleo environment, to Hell Creek, Montana where the T. rex

[Pencil-sketch animation dissolves into brown floor, Where the Wild Things Are-style, as a full-color leafy animated scene begins to emerge.]

roamed 65 million years ago.

[SOARING MUSIC]

[Ceiling and walls continue to disappear to be replaced by leafy trees, blue sky. The fully fleshed-out T. rex is shown walking and  grunting.]

[T. REX GRUNT]

[Vivian Trakinski shown in gallery.]

TRAKINSKI: This VR experience brings the goals of science visualization to life as no

[Visitors in headsets shown looking up and around.]

other platform could. We were able to transport visitors back to the time of

[Close-up on a visitor in a headset.]

Tyrannosaurus rex and put them in place with the tyrannosaur.

[Full-color animation of a T. rex jumping up to try and nip a pterosaur that soars overhead.]

They can really get a sense of the scale of that enormous creature.

[Vivian Trakinski shown in gallery.]

They got a sense of what it would be like to be right face-to-face with Tyrannosaurus rex

[Animation of T. rex looking at camera, then Vivian Trakinski shown in gallery.]

and that's bringing the science to life.

[Copy appears on screen: Catch T. rex: Skeleton Crew. March 11, 2019-August 9. 2020. At the American Museum of Natural History’s exhibition T. rex: The Ultimate Predator. Logos of the American Museum of Natural History and HTC Vive appear.]

[T. REX FOOT STOMPS, HUFF]