A T. Rex Is Flying From O'Hare To The Netherlands Today

By Gwendolyn Purdom in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 23, 2016 7:23PM

Trip the T.rex's passport (photo via the Naturalis Biodiversity Center)

It's been a big month for T. rexes in Chicago: a couple weeks back the Field Museum's famous dino, Sue, celebrated her 26th unearthed year with a dance party and a Spotify playlist. Now another famous T. rex is stopping by O' Hare en route to the Netherlands.

Trix, a 66-million-year-old female fossil that paleontologists dug up in Montana in 2013, will have her layover today before heading to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on a Royal Dutch Airlines flight packed with crates containing all 13,000 pounds of her bones. Once Trix arrives in the Netherlands, she'll go on display at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center as the first T. rex specimen on display at a museum in mainland Europe.

Passengers in the airport's international terminal will have a chance to see airline workers load up Trix's crates today, see her oversized passport, have their photo taken with a green screen T. rex, and enjoy special send-off perks like dino stickers and temporary tattoos, according to USA Today.

Passengers were very excited to be along for the ride:

“A skeleton of more than 40 feet high and 66 million years old is a proper symbol for the width and the depth of the scientific bonds between our two countries,” Louis Piet, Chicago Consul General of the Royal Kingdom of the Netherlands, said in a statement, “and its departure from Chicago is therefore an opportunity to call attention to this cooperation.”

Trix was excavated by paleontologists from the Naturalis center working with a team from South Dakota's Black Hills Institute. With 80 percent of her bones, she's one of the most complete T. rex skeletons around. Trix will go on display at the Naturalis center on September 10. You can keep up with her travels on social media with the hashtag #Trexpat.