Advertisement

Find out when you can see a Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex in Raleigh this year

Dinosaurs are coming to downtown Raleigh this year.

And hundreds of thousands more visitors are expected to be coming soon to one particular building in downtown Raleigh: the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Before the end of the year, Dueling Dinosaurs is scheduled to open.

The exhibit will feature a Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex. The two dinosaurs died 67 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous, according to the museum, on a subtropical coastal plain in present-day Montana.

The Tyrannosaurus rex skull that will be part of the Dueling Dinosaurs and DinoLab at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, N.C.
The Tyrannosaurus rex skull that will be part of the Dueling Dinosaurs and DinoLab at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, N.C.

They were buried side by side and were completely fossilized. Those fossils are in storage, awaiting the completion of the exhibit.

The T. rex in Dueling Dinosaurs is thought to be the only complete skeleton in the world.

Near the museum’s Jones Street entrance, passers-by may have noticed the construction going on outside and the closed sidewalk. The work being done there will create the new Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit and a revamped DinoLab. And they could be open by early December.

A rendering of the upcoming DinoLab and Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, N.C.
A rendering of the upcoming DinoLab and Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, N.C.

The entrance between the giant Earth globe and the Daily Planet Cafe will be more than just doors. It will be a literal window into the work of paleontologists.

Interior construction is about finished, and the dinosaurs now in storage will be moved into the exhibit slated to open in late fall.

Not a ‘typical dinosaur arrangement’

“It will be amazing for two reasons,” said Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson.

“Number one, nowhere else in the world will you have two intact dinosaurs together, where they were found on what is now a Montana hillside,” Wilson said.

The other reason, he said, is that visitors will be able to talk to paleontologists as they continue their work to uncover the two dinosaurs.

“It’s not going to look like a typical dinosaur arrangement,” he said. “These are still in the rock.”

The fossils are in what’s called a “jacket,” a covering of plaster around each segment.

Museum spokesperson Jonathan Pishney said that the typical museum dinosaur fossil is about 50% original with the rest a replica. But the T. rex fossil is completely real, and much of the Triceratops, too.

A pedestrian ramp is being installed now that will take exterior visitors up close to where work will be underway on dinosaur fossils.

The N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, usually entered from Bicentennial Plaza across from the N.C. Museum of History, will soon draw visitors to its Jones Street entrance that will feature the Deuling Dinosaurs exhibit and DinoLab, under construction now and slated to open in December 2023.
The N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, usually entered from Bicentennial Plaza across from the N.C. Museum of History, will soon draw visitors to its Jones Street entrance that will feature the Deuling Dinosaurs exhibit and DinoLab, under construction now and slated to open in December 2023.

Kevin Brice, the museum project manager, said construction challenges includes retrofitting a building not designed to hold such heavy objects. The total weight of Dueling Dinosaurs is 20,000 pounds, he said. So the project added steel to increase the load-bearing capacity of the building.

“I think this will become a really dramatic streetscape,” Brice said.

The DinoLab on the second floor of the museum will be moved to the first floor, making the space not just easier for visitors to interact with, but also able to have large fossils loaded through the street entrance. Previously, fossil size was limited by what could fit in the elevators, museum officials said.

Eric Lund, manager of the new SECU DinoLab, works next to a Triceratops skull in the Paleontology Research Lab on Tuesday, March 14, 2023, at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, N.C. Work done in the current paleontology lab will continue in the SECU DinoLab, which visitors will get to see from inside and outside the ground floor entrance on Jones Street of the “Dueling Dinosaurs” exhibit that will open in late 2023.

The fossils of the Dueling Dinosaurs that visitors can see being worked on will start with the skulls of the Triceratops and T. rex, followed by the body blocks.

Eric Lund, the paleontology lab manager, said that the new exhibit and DinoLab will extend transparency in their work by removing a barrier to visitors.

The Triceratops skull that will be part of the Dueling Dinosaurs and DinoLab at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, N.C.
The Triceratops skull that will be part of the Dueling Dinosaurs and DinoLab at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, N.C.

“It’s very spectacular, very special we were able to get them,” Lund said.

The museum expects 300,000 more visitors a year once it opens, in addition to the 1 million average visitors yearly that it gets now.