The Titus: T.Rex is King Exhibition at Wollaton Hall is the first time that a real T.Rex skeleton has been on display in England for at least 100 years and the first time that this particular skeleton, which was excavated from Montana by Craig Pfister in 2018 has ever been put on public display.
It’s not the first time I’ve come face to face with a T.Rex skeleton, that was at the Natural History Museum in Oslo, but this one was much easier to get close to as it wasn’t very busy and the way it was displayed slightly elevated made you get a good sense of the scale of the thing which is very imposing at 3.7 metres tall, 12 metres long and weighing in at 7.5 tons.
The T.Rex understandably takes up the whole of one room and then you proceed to other areas of the exhibition which chart the discovery of the skeleton. It was in September 2014 that Craig Pfister, a palaeontologist who had discovered T.Rex skeletons before, first found some of the bones but it wasn’t until 2018 that he was able to start a proper excavation which he surprisingly did on his own for the most part, with occasional help from a friend.
It was a very well done exhibition, though we did think there wasn’t a great deal to see other than the skeleton itself. We were impressed though by the interactive media displays, even if they were aimed for children!
Tickets are timed entry and have to be purchased in advance (though we got there a bit early on a Sunday and could walk straight in as it wasn’t very busy). Adult tickets are priced at £13 and the exhibition is on until 31 August 2022, so there’s plenty of time to visit. Local COVID advice is available on the Wollaton Hall website.
You can find some more photos here.
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