Dinosaur on exhibit more rare than thought

Thomas Carr knows an albertosaurus when he sees one.

And that dinosaur standing next to the Tyrannosaurus rex at the Museum of World Treasures in Wichita is no albertosaurus, Carr said, regardless of what the label says.

Instead, it’s a daspletosaurus, one of only 11 known complete specimens of that kind in the world.

“For me, it’s like going to the zoo and seeing a bald eagle labeled as a sparrow or a chickadee,” said Carr, an assistant professor of biology at Carthage College and associate curator of the Dinosaur Discovery Museum, both in Kenosha, Wis.

Carr came to Wichita on Thursday to study the museum’s T-rex, Ivan. That’s when he noticed Cutie, who had been labeled as an albertosaurus by the company that sold her to the museum two years ago.

Carr estimates that Cutie was 13 years old and weighed 2,233 pounds when she died. She is a 21-foot-long tyrannosaur, a close relative of the T-rex standing nearby.

Lon Smith, a spokesman for the museum, said he expects paleontologists to come to Wichita to study the two dinosaurs.

“You could imagine how precious these two skeletons would be to a scientist,” he said, especially side by side.