The museum has been open again for a few days now after Ike wiped us all out for a while. And – we’re back at work on the world premiere exhibit Dinosaur Mummy CSI: Cretaceous Science Investigation. Having gotten to know Leonardo so well over the past few months, I’m ridiculously excited about his debut on Sept. 26 - I can’t wait to see what all of you think. The exhibit is being built as I write this, and from even a preliminary walk through, I think you’re truly going to be blown away by this extraordinary fossil. 

Leonardo is so well preserved that you can literally see what he looked like alive – right down to the texture of his skin. As written in the June 2005 Newsweek article that reported the find, “it evokes, far better than any mounted skeleton, a real animal that lived and died.”

Not only can you see what he looked like – you’ll also see inside. Leonardo has preserved, internal organs and the exhibit presents the results of high tech scanning of the fossil.

Our paleontology team is also working on the fossilized remains of another hadrosaur, named Peanut, that was found on the same ranch as Leonardo – and you’ll be able to see their progress as they continue to work on this fossil in the exhibit. (You may recognize Peanut from our earlier video, Mapping A Dinosaur with Dr. Bob Bakker.)

As you might expect from a fossil specimen that has been subjected to massive geologic forces over millions of years, there is some repair work to be done before it can be displayed. In the video below, associate curator of paleontology, David Temple, discusses one of a paleontologist’s most frequently-used tools: glue.