World’s largest dinosaur to go on display at Te Papa for Dinosaurs of Patagonia exhibition

The largest dinosaur in the world is heading to Te Papa, writes Melissa Nightingale

Are you about to catch a flight? Consider your ideal flight-mates.

Probably not a child kicking the back of your seat, or a snoring man slumping over on your shoulder. Unlikely to be that woman with her bare foot wedged against your armrest.

How about a 600kg dinosaur femur instead? Roll your eyes all you want, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

Okay, perhaps I exaggerate a smidge, but according to the project manager for the Dinosaurs of Patagonia exhibition about to open in Te Papa, it’s not unheard of for some of their precious fossils to be carefully loaded on to commercial planes and flown to their next destination - though it won’t be strapped into a cramped economy class seat.

One of the fossils in the Dinosaurs of Patagonia exhibition. Photo / Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio

The exhibition, carrying an enormous skeleton cast of the largest dinosaur in the world, has been travelling Australia and will be opening in New Zealand in December.

Although at times some of the fossils may be transported by air, due to sheer size the bulk of the exhibition - which includes some of the largest fossils ever found - travels by ship. Even as you read this, a herd of dinosaurs could be chugging steadily across the Pacific, or maybe they’re already being assembled in Wellington.

I visited Dinosaurs of Patagonia at its last stop before New Zealand, Queensland Museum. It was the final day of the exhibition, and hundreds of people were crowding in to get a last glimpse of the massive Patagotitan mayorum.

A cast of Patagotitan, the world's largest dinosaur. Photo / Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio

Only discovered about a decade ago on a ranch in Argentina, the gigantic herbivore could reach 42m in length and 76 tonnes in weight. The dinosaur lived about 101 million years ago and is the largest land life form to have ever been discovered.

Project manager Matías Cutro, who has travelled with the exhibition from the Paleontological Museum Egidio Feruglio (MEF), said most of the dinosaur fossil discoveries in Patagonia had been made by gauchos, which he referred to as “Argentinian cowboys”.

Patagotitan was found when a man was out walking his dog, and the dog started sniffing around a piece of thigh bone protruding from the ground.

Another member of the exhibition, the Carnotaurus, was found when a sheep split off from its flock and the gaucho picked up a rock to throw to get it to come back. What he picked up was actually a piece of fossil.

Cutro said Patagotitan was “the big star” of the exhibition, but the other dinosaurs were all important to people from Patagonia. For example, Carnotaurus was significant to the area because fossils of this dinosaur have been found only in that province - nowhere else in the world.

A cast of a dinosaur skull at the Dinosaurs of Patagonia exhibition. Photo / Melissa Nightingale

The dinosaurs were important to MEF workers because they were from their “back yard”. “We love all our dinosaurs.”

“At MEF we are all fans about our dinosaurs,” he said. “It’s like a rule to work at MEF.”

When the exhibition first arrived in Australia and Cutro saw all the boxes lined up, ready to be unpacked, he cried happy tears, thinking about all the work that had gone into bringing the exhibition to the world.

Instalation takes 15-20 days, and about the same length of time is taken to take it all down again. “It’s a big Lego,” he said.

Planning to bring the dinosaurs across the world begins years earlier, but all the effort is worth it.

“For us, they can walk again in this world,” he said.

Putting the exhibition together was like playing with Lego, said Matias Cutro. Photo / Melissa Nightingale

Queensland Museum head of exhibition management Bernadette McCormack said setting up the exhibition in Brisbane was a “long time in the making”.

For them it had taken five or six years to organise, thanks to Covid throwing a spanner in the works.

Dinosaur exhibitions were always a crowd favourite, along with mummies and space, she said.

“I don’t think you can come around the corner to see Patagotitan and not be awed.

“It’s a once in a lifetime - if it was only the single specimen it would be worthwhile coming to see. You’re not going to see this again, you’re seeing the real thing.”

The dig site for the fossils of the Patagotitan, in Patagonia. Photo / Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio

The exhibition in Queensland was “incredibly popular”, drawing in thousands of people on its closing weekend.

Those people spilled back out of the museum onto the streets of Brisbane, taking just a little bit of the dinosaur magic with them. At dinner that night, I’m seated near a family with two small boys, both wearing dinosaur hand puppets I recognise from the exhibition gift shop.

As the boys and their hand puppets stomp off into the night, I can’t help but think Cutro was right - the dinosaurs are walking the earth again after all.

Dinosaurs of Patagonia project manager Matías Cutro of the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio stands under a cast of the world's largest dinosaur, Patagotitan. Photo / Melissa Nightingale

Checklist

DETAILS

Dinosaurs of Patagonia will run at Te Papa in Wellington from December 16, 2023 to April 28, 2024. Ticket prices range from $14.50 for children to $29.90 for adults, and there are additional discounted prices for those eligible. Tickets are on sale now.

tepapa.govt.nz

Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.