A T-Rex named Blue stands near the entrance to the Feldspar Museum of Prehistory, jaws towering overhead as if to gulp down the visitor. At 16 feet tall and nearly 54 feet long from nose to tail, Blue is nearly 20% larger than Sue, the former record holder at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.
Discovered in 2013 in Canada's Dinosaur Provincial Park east of Calgary, Blue was acquired by the Feldspar for the record price of $11.2 Million. It was only after the bones were undergoing analysis at the Prehistory Institute that scientists realized they had not only discovered soft tissue, but were able to sample real, honest-to-goodness dinosaur DNA.
While previous reports of dinosaur tissue proved to be either bio-film contamination or preservation errors, the FMP's sterile archive center, enabled the reconstruction team to isolate entire DNA strands.
The most striking discovery was RGBNA pairs that allowed the paleo team to recover the skin coloration patterners. Previously, most dinosaurs were depicted in natural camouflage colors of greens and browns, similar to modern lizards and alligators. But, just as nature often dresses her species in bright colors, Blue turned out to be a very flamboyant tyrannosaur.
Blue's discoverer, Dr. Linda Vaccariello, explained that Blue is, in fact, not blue, but a bright, rusty red over all, with Bengal-tiger-like black and white stripes. This may actually have been a better color scheme for invisibility in the Jurassic forests.
