New dinosaur fossil at Mt. Pleasant library

The Mt. Pleasant Library has a new fossil on display. It is a replica of a deinonychus, a carnivorous small theropod.

“We got the dinosaur replica from England about three months ago. Our former director had ordered it at about the same time that COVID-19 hit,” said Amy Willson, the Children’s Librarian. “This is a replica resin cast from an original fossil.“

“It came in a box that was three feet by two feet by eight inches tall, not a very big box for such a large skeleton,” Wilson continued. “And the completed skeleton of the dinosaur is about 8.5 feet long by 4 feet high at its head.”

It took three days to complete the replica, and lots of patience.

“We got two small bottles of glue and a sheet with a set of 18-step instructions,” explained Willson. “It had a few markers for parts like the ribs, but that was all. And I am no dinosaur expert. It told me left from right, but nothing really beyond that.”

“About three weeks ago, I had the chance to put it together,” said Willson. “It took me, Toi Mills, and a friend that was a scientist, three days to complete it.”

“The replica is very fragile and it was difficult to not break pieces as we were gluing them together, because it did not fit together very well at all,” said Willson. “So we pushed, prodded and scraped it together the best we could.”

Named “Terrible Claw,” the deinonychus would rip at its prey with its long claws. The dinosaur was almost 10 feet in length and weighed 165 pounds, and lived in what is now the United States 120 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.

The replica is on permanent display on the main floor of the library, in a place where it cannot be touched. However, there are two other dinosaur displays at the children’s library section that are available to be touched and examined.