World's largest dinosaur gets makeover in Berlin

By Julia Citron

BERLIN (Reuters Life!) - The world's largest dinosaur skeleton is busy being fixed, buffed and pampered for the summer opening of an exhibition at Berlin's natural history museum.

A team of Canadian specialists are reconstructing the 12.5 meter high (41 feet), 23 meter long Brachiosaurus after the giant herbivore was dismantled three years ago while the museum building was refurbished.

Since then, it has undergone a total makeover, with numerous sections of the skeleton recast in carbon fiber -- a material experts working on the project said was about 100 times lighter than the original fossils.

"All the legs are real, the shoulder and the entire tail is original fossil material" explained Kristian Remes, the scientist in charge of the reconstruction.

"But the slightly smoother parts, like some of the spinal vertebrae are reconstructed. Using modern technology, the dinosaur models are more accurate than ever as well as more elegant".

The bones of the Brachiosaurus, considered one of the largest dinosaurs to have ever walked the earth, were found in the early 1900s in Tendaguru, a former German colony, in what is now Tanzania.

New techniques being used at the Berlin museum fit metal armatures around the bones, holding them like fingers rather than having to drill through them.

That allows the full weight of 50 ton structure to be propped up by the metal supports, easing the burden on the fossils themselves. Under the new method, individual bones can be removed and studied without dismantling the whole structure.