Ranchers' T. rex discovery makes move to Smithsonian

Amanda Radke

It was Labor Day in 1988 when Tom and Kathy Wankel, ranchers from Angela, Montana, took their kids on a camping trip to Fork Peck Lake. When the fish weren’t biting, Tom and Kathy decided to do a little hiking and rock hunting, and that’s why Kathy saw it — a brown and shiny object that looked like the side of a butter knife. “Mom knew there were dinosaurs in the area, and when she saw the bone, she could tell it looked different than the other rocks,” said Whitney (Wankel) Klasna, who was just a 1-year-old when her mom found the bone. Digging with a pocketknife, the couple extracted bones out of the hard, dry dirt. Later, they would take their find to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. “Mom and Dad opened the tailgate of the station wagon and showed the lead paleontologist at the museum the bones,” said Klasna. “He immediately knew what it was.” It was the arm of a T. rex. And in 1989 and 1990, a crew of experts would go on to dig up 60 tons of cap rock to uncover the skeleton of the giant dinosaur, thanks to the Wankels' discovery on the family camping trip. “Over all these years, this is still is one of the largest and most complete skeletons of the T. rex ever found,” said Jack Horner, Museum of the Rockies curator of paleontology, in a video capturing the discovery. On June 8, the Wankel T. rex found a new home at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The Smithsonian spent five years completely redesigning the museum’s fossil exhibit hall, and the June celebration officially revealed the curators’ and paleontologists’ work, which included, of course, the Wankel T. rex. “Our entire family and 150 of our closest friends and relatives got to be part of the exhibit celebration, which included a private dinner and tour of the Smithsonian where lead scientists and paleontologists were there to answer our questions,” said Klasna. “It was an incredible event to be part of, and although we were sad to see the T. rex leave Montana, knowing that 5-6 million people visit the museum each year, it’s exciting to share this dinosaur and its story with so many people from around the world.”...MORE