BY BERNIE HORNICK
MANNS CHOICE — You could call it a Jurassic Lark, though state police aren’t amused.
Someone has stolen the fossilized skull of an allosaurus dinosaur from the Coral Caverns Museum in Manns Choice.
“An allosaurus is a kind of ‘small’ T-rex,” said spokeswoman Ellen James of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, which has a dinosaur collection.
Whether the bones were stolen as a conversation piece or to be sold is pure conjecture.
But, James said, “I have heard anecdotally there is a pretty active market of collectors.” One seller on e-Bay, for example, wants $245 for a partial T-rex toe bone.
The allosaurus roamed North America – primarily Wyoming, Utah and western Canada, James said.
The skull has not turned up and the thieves remain at large.
State police said someone broke into the museum on Cavern Street between
12:30 p.m. Oct. 10 and 9:30 a.m. Oct. 11.
Anyone with information may call the police barracks in Bedford: 623-6133.
Coral Caverns claims to be the only fossilized coral reef cavern in existence.
Its fossil wall purports to hold the remains of coral and other sea creatures that were buried when Pennsylvania was partially submerged in “The Great Inland Sea” about 400 million years ago.
As for the allosaurus, having its head stolen is just the latest ignominy.
It also was having a bad day about 65 million years ago when it looked up to find the sky darkened by a speeding meteor, of all things, and was wiped out.
Some scientists theorize that dinosaurs became extinct when a 9-mile-wide meteor plunged into the Earth at the Gulf of Mexico.
