Netherlands 2016 "T.rex in town"
| Issue Date | 10.09.2016 |
| ID | Michel: Stanley Gibbons: UPU: Category: pR |
| Author | |
| Stamps in set | 3 |
| Value | '1' rate stamps (inland letter
rate, 0,73 €. at time of issue) x3 Tyrannosaurus |
| Size (width x height) |
|
| Layout | mini sheets of 3 stamps |
| Products | Postcard x1 (3 identical postcards sold in a set with the mini sheet) |
| Paper | |
| Perforation | |
| Print Technique | |
| Printed by | |
| Quantity | |
| Issuing Authority | Naturalis museum |
On September 10, 2016 Natural History Museum "Naturalis Biodeversity Cente" (Leiden, Netherlands) in cooperation with Netherland's Post, issued a Souvenir Sheet with three personalized stamps to commemorate "T. rex in town" event that took place between September 10, 2016 and June 2017. Although issued by Netherland's Post, they were only available through their collectors shops at more than twice their face value. Logo of the museum is depicting on bottom-left corner of the sheet.
All stamps shows reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus, named "Trix" in honor of former queen Beatrix.
This is the first ever full Tyrannosaurus skeleton of Netherlands and is the first and only T. rex permanently exhibit outside of North America.
The story of Trix began in the summer of 2012 when the museum's director, Edwin van Huis, expressed his ambition to get Tyrannosaurus. Researchers of Naturalis went on an expedition in the United States, where almost a year later fossil of Trex was unearthed out of the sandstone in Montana. With the help of crowd funding, the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, succeeded in excavating and buying this unique prehistoric treasure at a cost of EUR 5 million.
On 23 August 2016, 250 passengers on a
KLM flight
departing from
Chicago’s
O’Hare International Airport heard a surprising announcement while they
were waiting to board. They were told that they’d be flying to
Amsterdam with the 66+ million year old Tyrannosaurus. At an earlier press
conference, a group of representatives from the Netherlands and the US
unveiled a large Dutch passport for the dino. Trix officially arrived
in Leiden a few days later and was welcomed to town with a celebration
featuring hundreds of local school children. A caravan that included a
marching band, a T. Rex parade float, TV naturalist Freek Vonk, and
paleontologist Anne Schulp led a lorry carrying the bones to a stage
set up in the city’s historic Beestenmarkt.
During its lifetime, the
dinosaur would have stood 4 – 5
metres tall and weighed 5,000 kilogrammes. The skeleton
measures 12.5 meters from nose to
tail and four meters from the hip down. According to
analysis of
Naturalis staff, the dinosaur was likely a female and would have died
at about the age of 30 around 66 – 67 million years ago.The skeleton contains about 80% of the bone volume, that consists of 300 bones, 55 of which make up the huge skull and it is one of the most complete skeletons of Tyrannosaurus found to date. Missing bones reproduced by 3D printing. The 3D printed bones are painted a slightly different color so that visitor of the museum can see what part of the skeleton was missing.
“For
a museum it’s almost an advantage when you’re missing bones because in
a 3D print you can easily add a hole in the middle and run steel
through the inside of the print,” said Anne Schulp, head of T. rex
research at Naturalis. “So what we often do if we have one leg but not
the other is that we take the steel frame that supports the entire
dinosaur and hide it inside the lightweight 3D printed replica bones to
support the rest of the entire skeleton.”
Trix mounted in a unique position, low to the ground pose
that will make her seem more dangerous and intense than other T.rex
skeletons in museums around the world, allows to visitor to see in eyes
of this dangerous prehistoric predator.The pose was choose because Trix feature her actual skull instead of a replica, which requires a substantial amount of support that can’t be achieved with a more traditional pose.
| Clean ans used Postcards that sold in a set with the mini sheet | Used letters |
 |
 |
References: Naturalis Biodeversity Cente Chicago Tribune Daily Mail Blog of KLM Notey Businesswire Dutch News Cargo forwarder Lonely Planet Stampedout Wikipedia
 |
|
Last update 20.01.2018
Any feedback, comments or even complaints are welcome: [email protected] (you can email me on ENglish, DEutsch, or RUssian)