The Tyrannosaurus rex may have been extinct for 66 million years, but the king of the dinosaurs can now be found roaming freely at Post Offices.
“The T. Rex has stirred the public imagination — and for good reason,” Isaac Cronkhite, the Postal Service’s chief human resources officer, said during the Aug. 29 dedication ceremony for the Tyrannosaurus Rex stamps.
He explained that the name “Tyrannosaurs rex” translates to “tyrant lizard king” in Greek and Latin. “And though the T. Rex really wasn’t a lizard, the name gives you an idea of this remarkable and fearsome creature,” Cronkhite said.
With powerful jaws packed in its 4-foot-long skull and banana-sized teeth serrated like steak knives, the T. rex easily bit through the flesh and hefty bones of even large dinosaur prey. Its full-grown weight was 6-10 tons, and its maximum length was about 40 feet.
The ceremony was held at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, which is home to “The Nation’s T. rex,” the young adult dinosaur depicted on two of the four stamps.
Other speakers at the ceremony were Kirk Johnson, the museum’s director; Matthew Carrano, curator of the museum’s “Dinosauria” exhibit; and Julius T. Csotonyi, the stamp artist and a contributor to the exhibit. Shawn Yancy, a news anchor for the Fox station in Washington, was the emcee.
The 16-stamp pane features four designs of the dinosaur in growth stages from infancy to adulthood. Two of the stamps show movement when rotated.
The stamps are available at Post Offices and usps.com.
