TNT transports T. rex skull from U.S. to Germany

The 66 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skull traveled from the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota to the Fraunhofer EZRT research institute in Fuerth, Germany.    TNT Express transported the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex from the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota, United States, to the Fraunhofer EZRT research institute in Fuerth, Germany.
   TNT packed the 690-kilo skull in a 1.90-meter long wooden crate, trucked it from South Dakota to JFK Airport in New York, loaded it on to a Boeing 747 aircraft, flew it to the company’s air hub in Liege, and then trucked it to Fuerth. The entire journey totaled 7,800 kilometers.
   The 66 million-year-old female T. rex skull, owned by the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands, was originally excavated in Montana in 2013 and acquired by Naturalis in 2014.
   The global express carrier said in a statement it will transport the specimen back to the United States in the first week of June 2015, during which time it will stop in Amsterdam to appear on a national TV show. The full T.rex skeleton will be displayed at Naturalis in Leiden, Netherlands in September 2016.
   “We are proud to assist the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in bringing a rare T. rex skeleton to Europe,” said Grant Cochrane, global special services director at TNT. “At TNT, we have the required expertise and a history of delivering very special cargo. But this is our first opportunity to handle a prehistoric item of such research value.”
   The Netherlands-based TNT in April tentatively agreed to be acquired by FedEx Corp. for $4.8 billion. TNT reported revenues of 6.7 billion euros (U.S. $7.52 billion) in 2014.
   To read more about the Naturalis T.rex, visit the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre wbsite.