Jane is about 50% complete, far more complete than most dinosaur finds. Most dinosaurs are known from only a handful of bones. Because Jane is so complete, we've been able to learn a lot from her skeleton. Her completeness also made it possible to display the real bones for the Jane exhibit that opened in June 2005.

All those bones mean a lot of work, though! Headed up by Scott Williams, Burpee's Collections Manager, a team of fossil preparators began chipping away at the rocks that contained Jane's bones in 2002. It would end up taking more than 18 months and 10,000 man-hours to complete the work.

Jane's bones are extremely fragile. As a result, every bone was cleaned and treated with hardener after it was removed from its field jacket. First, an air abrasion machine was used to "sandblast" the bones with baking soda to clean them. Baking soda is harder than the surrounding rock, but softer than the bones, so it removes the rock without damaging the bones. Next, the bones were hardened by painting many thin coats of vinac (a vinyl-acetone mixture) over them. The vinac penetrates the porous fossil bone and fills any tiny cracks and voids within it. When the process was completed, Jane's bones were much stronger and safe to handle.

After each part of Jane's skeleton was cleaned and hardened, a silicone rubber mold was made from it. Using the mold, exact plastic replicas were made. Because of this, copies of Jane's skeleton are available for distribution to museums and researchers around the world.

Jane's bones were even CT scanned! A CT scanner allows us to see the internal structure of the bones.

Jane's bones are extremely fragile... ~>

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