PARIS (AFP).- Trix, an eight-tonne Tyrannosaurus rex, will find a home at Paris' Jardin des Plantes for three months from Wednesday, greeting visitors in attack mode, with her terrifying, toothy snarl mounted at eye level.

The female in her 30s, unearthed in Montana in the United States in 2013, has a fully intact skull and is among the best preserved T. rex fossils ever found -- the first real skeleton of the species ever to be displayed in France, according to the Natural History Museum behind the exhibit.

At 12.5 metres (41 feet) in length and four metres high, Trix can be viewed at the botanical garden's Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology from Wednesday to September 2.

"This specimen is one (of three) of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons in the world, with nearly 75 percent of the bones in excellent form," said the museum.

Travelling around Europe, the ferocious carnivore's remains will be mounted in typical T. rex attack pose, bent over with its neck low to the ground, its massive jaws stretched wide in a 1.5-metre skull, staring straight into the visitor's face.

The skeleton is estimated to be about 67 million years old, which means Trix died shortly before the presumed asteroid strike that wiped out most life on Earth, and all non-avian dinosaurs, some 65.5 million years ago.

The exhibition will also include reconstructed examples of Trix' favourite prey, including a duck-billed, vegetarian hadrosaur, said the museum.


© Agence France-Presse