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 Over Labor Weekend, 2005, a life-size bronze replica of a horned Torosaurus traveled down Broadway to the Yellow Bird Gallery on Front Street. Fabricated at Polich Studios, the dinosaur migrated after the weekend to its permanent home in front of the Peabody Museum at Yale University in New Haven.
1. What is a Torosaurus?
Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, the horned and frilled Torosaurus tromped the face of the earth. Torosaurus latus was big, VERY BIG: twelve feet high, twenty-one feet long, weighing as much as 18,000 pounds, with a frill ( frill is the name of the collar that protected the nape of the neck of the creature) that extended five feet over his back. He was the last and most advanced of the horned dinosaurs with one of the largest skulls of any land animal that ever lived.
 2. How did Torosaurus get to Newburgh?
The life-size sculpture was engineered and cast in bronze at Polich Art Works, Rock Tavern, N.Y. Dick Polich, the owner and director of the foundry is a Yale graduate as well as the owner of The Yellow Bird Gallery on Newburgh’s waterfront. This huge bronze of Torosaurus, 12 feet high and 21 feet long, is an enormous accomplishment on so many levels: scientific, historic, philanthropic and artistic, that he wanted the community to have an opportunity to see this massive bronze sculpture. Dick asked and Yale graciously gave its permission to allow Torosaurus to be shown in the Yellow Bird Gallery over the Labor Day weekend.
3. What does Yale have to do with this?
This has been a Yale production from conception to installation. Torosaurus was donated to the University by Stan Phelps, Yale class of 1956, his wife Betsy, and their grandchildren, Max, Garrett, and Ford. The process of creating the life-size sculpture was guided by the scientists and staff of the Yale University Peabody Museum of Natural History under the leadership of Michael Anderson, an artist on the staff of the Museum. The finished sculpture is now installed on a granite base outside the Museum’s main building on the Yale campus.
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