Airports and dinosaurs.
It seems to be a thing.
Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (ORD) has a 72-foot-long, 45-foot-tall Brachiosauras skeleton replica on loan from the Field Museum in Terminal 1 , Concourse B. (Her name is Ernestine).
At Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Ally, a replica 30-foot-long, 15-foot-tall Allosaurus fragilis skeleton is on display at the entrace to Concourse B, courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Utah.
And for many years, PIttsburgh International Airport (PIT) had a dinosaur cast on display.
Now Colorado’s Grand Junction Regional Aiport (GJT) is hoping to have a dinosaur replica to display too.
Not just any dinosaur. But it’s own replica casting of the Brachiosaurus fossils discovered at what is known now as Riggs Hill in Grand Junction, not far from where GJT airport sits today.
Back in 1900, it was Chicago Field Museum paleontologist Elmer S. Riggs who uncovered the remains of one of the largest land animals ever discovered. That’s the dinosaur he named Brachiosaurus altithorax.
(Courtesy The Field Museum)
And that’s the dino replica cast on display at O’Hare Airport.
Now, as part of its ongoing renovations and expansion, Grand Junction Regional Airport wants its own cast of that dino.
The airport, the Museums of Western Colorado, the local community and Gensler (the architecuture firm leading the airport expansion) are working together to figure out how to fit a dino into the terminal.
And to help make it happen, they’re raising funds for the “Bringing our Brach Home Project.”
Thousands of visitors arrive in Grand Junction every year to to visit the area’s public lands. Project organizers believe a towering Brachiosaurus rising inside the terminal would be “an unmistakable reminder that they have arrived somewhere extraordinary.”
We agree.
