LOS ANGELES (KABC) — The Natural History Museum introduces Los Angeles to a new four-legged friend: Gnatalie the Dinosaur!
Thanks to National Geographic, ABC7 gives you a little taste.
“Gnatalie was found in the Badlands of Utah in 2007, so it took almost 17 years to put Gnatalie together for this exhibit,” said Chris Weisbart, assistant exhibit director at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
According to the Natural History Museum, dozens of LA people were involved in the excavation of the long-necked dinosaur, including paleontologists, researchers and volunteers.
For this reason, Gnatalie is nicknamed “The Community Dinosaur.”
About 80% of the dinosaur is real. It is a composite of several dinosaurs, all of the same species, and weighs about five tons, about the size of a camper van.
“Gnatalie is a diplodocus dinosaur, which means it walked on land,” Weisbart said. “It ate plants. It was enormously long. It’s almost 23 meters long. The skeleton itself, and it lived about 150 million years ago.”
The minerals in the riverbed where Gnatalie’s fossils were found give the dinosaur its green color. It is the only dinosaur with green bones in the world.
“Gnatalie was named after the biting mosquitoes that are found in this area of the Utah Badlands. The excavation teams are out for months in the summer, and it is very hot and full of biting insects,” Weisbart said.
Since 2007, the bones have been undergoing a lengthy and meticulous excavation, which will be featured in the September issue of National Geographic. Nat Geo’s exclusive report on the reconstructed dinosaur can be found at NatGeo.com.
You can visit Gnatalie at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park starting November 17. The exhibit is free.
The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of National Geographic and this ABC channel.
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