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MUSEUM

Berlin museum hopes giant T-Rex will be big hit

With the Berlin Natural History Museum preparing to display Europe's first ever Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton this week, The Local spoke to Prof. Johannes Vogel, museum director, to find out what makes Tristan the T-Rex so important.

Published: 16 December 2015 15:49 CET
Berlin museum hopes giant T-Rex will be big hit
Tristan will "transform the perception" of the museum, said Vogel. Photo: Hannah Butler

On December 17th, “Tristan – Berlin bares teeth” opens to the public.

The exhibition will be unveiled at Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum), and is set to run for at least three years.

“This is an amazing moment for the museum,” Prof. Johannes Vogel, museum director, told The Local on Wednesday.

T-Rex specimens “have this funny effect of transforming the perception of museums,” he said, “and this will be no exception.”

One of the world's best preserved examples of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, 'Tristan Otto' is also the first original T-Rex skeletons ever displayed in Europe.

Tristan's original skull weighed around 180kg. Photo: Hannah Butler

Tristan is an estimated 66 million years old, and was found in Montana, USA in 2010.

His official owner and sponsor is Niels Nielsen – who was also present for Tristan's introduction to an excited German press crowd.

Berlin is “the perfect place for Tristan,” he said in a statement.

“The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is one of the world's leading museums with outstanding exhibitions and research, particularly regarding dinosaurs.”

Tristan's sponsor and owner Niels Nielsen spoke to journalists in Berlin on Wednesday. Photo: Hannah Butler

Tristan is a “one-off opportunity for Berlin,” Prof. Vogel added.

“We're a very well known museum in Berlin, and we're much loved in Germany,” he told The Local. “And now I think we are a big time player on the world stage.”

The T-Rex looks set to be a major attraction for tourists and locals alike in the city.

“At the moment we get half a million visitors per year, and if we are lucky, we might double that,” Vogel predicted.

Photo: Hannah Butler

Only 50 T-Rex specimens have ever been discovered – and while experts believe a complete skeleton would have around 300 bones, no full skeletons have ever been found.

Tristan's original skeleton was discovered with 170 bones, making him one of the most well-preserved T-Rexs ever found.

He is set to remain at the museum for at least three years – but Vogel is keen to extend the T Rex's visit,

Berlin Natural History Museum Director Johannes Vogel poses with part of Tristan's Jaw in Montana in July, before the dinosaur's transport to Berlin. Photo: DPA

“Nobody knows what's going to happen afterwards,” he told The Local. “But we will do our very best to keep it a little bit longer.”

It's hoped that Tristan will prove useful in upcoming research at the museum – and that the exhibition can grow and develop as cutting-edge research reveals more and more about the dinosaur's life.

You can visit Tristan from Thursday at Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde (U-Bahn and Tram stop Naturkundemuseum).

By Hannah Butler

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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