Bring Our NM Bisti Beast Home

In the Spring of 2016, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History Museum was approached by a group of researchers at the Fukui Prefectory Museum in Fukui, Japan and asked if we could loan them a group of paleontological fossils and casts that curators of the Museum had discovered in New Mexico. Among them was a group of fossils associated with what we have described as the Bisti Beast , an early Tyrannosaurus Rex found by paleontologist Dr. Thomas Williamson. Dr. Williamson had recently published research on this material and the Japanese representatives were very anxious to acquire these particular materials for a temporary exhibition that was going to tour Japan called “The Great Journey of Dinosaurs .”

Once the complex process of loaning these materials was completed, Dr. Williamson and Museum Director Margie Marino traveled to all three sites of the exhibition—Fukui, Japan, Nagoya, and Chiba City/Tokyo at the request of the sponsors. Much to our amazement, we found that the New Mexico materials were not only featured in the exhibition, but that the exhibition developers worked with the International Kokoro, Inc. in Japan to create a life-size, dynamic, animatronic robot Bisti Beast that traveled to all three locations. This extremely sophisticated engineering feat exhibits some of the most realistic and authentic movements available in such a design, such as breathing lungs, moving eyes, and sweeping and dramatic movements of the head and tail. This is the only dinosaur of its kind, and the only robotic dinosaur in existence custom-created based on a New Mexico scientific discovery.

At the end of the run of the temporary exhibition, Cabinet Secretary Veronica Gonzales determined that we had to have this dinosaur here in New Mexico for the enjoyment of our young visitors. We found that we could obtain this very dinosaur at a fraction of the price of what it would cost to have it created by us--$120,000 plus shipping. The engineering of the dinosaur is such that with regular maintenance it could last as long as twenty years and would provide a landmark experience in the Museum’s Cretaceous Hall—jump-starting a badly-needed renovation.