A report released earlier this month on the state of Toronto's tourism industry stated the city is not perceived as a "Must See/Must Do" destination among Canadian and American travellers.

Click here to read the full report.

In "The Local Tourist" series CityNews.ca writer Shawne McKeown and videographer Brian McKechnie set out to rediscover some of Toronto's best-known attractions and report back with some neat and new findings on familiar places. We go behind-the-scenes at the Royal Ontario Museum in our first story.

Standing in front of the impressive 27-metre-long skeleton of a barosaurus that towers over the other dinosaur specimens in the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal gallery at the ROM, it's hard to imagine the painstakingly detailed work carried out over months or years to prepare the remnants of these ancient creatures for public display.

CityNews.ca got a glimpse into the interesting world behind some of the exhibits at the renowned museum. Dr. Kevin Seymour, assistant curator of vertebrate palaeontology, took us into the lab where students and technicians delicately remove rock to expose bones and bone fragments for mounting and research.

At the back of the modestly sized workroom a large piece of rock sat under a lamp with a brush and a small device resembling a miniature jackhammer nearby. That big lump was actually a field jacket - a piece of rock cut out of the earth containing bone that is wrapped in plaster for protection - that housed about one third of the skull of a duck-billed dinosaur.

Another field jacket in the lab, (not the one noted above).

Seymour noted this field jacket provided a particularly interesting challenge because the bone inside was very broken up. Piecing these fragments together could take up to four months and putting together an entire dinosaur could take up to two years, maybe more, depending on the condition of the rock and bone.

The badly broken skull may not have a lot of aesthetic value but it does have tremendous research potential.

 "We sort of triage the best (specimens) in the gallery, the next best ones have been prepared and mounted and the not-so-good ones have been left but in terms of doing research, broken bones and where the bones are separate are very, very useful because you get to see a bone from all angles rather than all put together as a skull," Seymour explained.

Another lab technician prepared pieces of the museum's famous 150-million-year-old barosaurus, nicknamed "Gordo", when CityNews.ca visited. This creature is one of the largest known dinosaurs and the one on display at the ROM is one of only two out for exhibit in the world.

Because Gordo was a last-minute find he was assembled quickly and so there are some pieces of the skeleton that have been filled in with casts.

"It's the only barosaurus skeleton in the world with real bone in it," Seymour said, adding the other mounted skeleton is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and it's a complete cast.

Gordo's skeleton was literally hiding in the ROM's closet for decades. Curators wanted a show-stopping creature for display for the opening of the new Age of Dinosaurs gallery in December and they agreed a lofty and rare barosaurus would fit the bill nicely.

When a newly-hired curator started putting out feelers to find a barosaurus - a member of the sauropod family - he stumbled upon an article written by a famed sauropod expert that referenced a barosaurus skeleton at the ROM.

Stunned, he rifled through some paperwork back at the museum and discovered Gordo had in fact been on the museum's shelves for decades. The museum received several field jackets containing pieces of the creature from the Carnegie Museum in an exchange back in 1962. Because a key diagnostic part - the neck - was missing, ROM staff assumed it wasn't a barosaurus, but rather miscellaneous pieces of a relatively common sauropod, Diplodocus.

"We didn't know that all of the bones we had prepared were from one individual," Seymour said.

The realization was an incredible one for the ROM - Gordo is now the largest dinosaur on permanent display in Canada.

Pieces of Gordo were found in various drawers even after the massive skeleton was mounted in the gallery and those fragments were still being prepared this month.

Seymour also took us through the vertebrate palaeontology collections room, which is the museum's storage space for study, research and consideration for the gallery.

"I've only been here 25 years and the collection has moved twice so in all that moving these things happen," Seymour explained.

Large shelves containing Triassic (about 250 to 200 million years ago) and Jurassic (about 200 to 150 million years ago) marine reptile material from British Columbia, duck-billed dinosaur skulls, decades-old field jackets, and ice-age materials including mastodon, mammoth and large fish fossils, line each side of the room.

But a majority of this collections area is comprised of thousands of drawers - about 3,500 - containing bones from various time periods rigged on a compaction storage system to maximize space.

"We have skeletons of all different types of things in here, fish, frogs, and alligators, monkeys and cats and elephants and all sorts of stuff," Seymour explained, adding newer material is used for comparison research.

And a row of vented, lead-lined grey cabinets stand against a back wall, which contain radioactive bones.

Seymour said the museum has plenty of Jurassic and Cretaceous (approximately 145 to 65 million years ago) material on display and hopes to show the public its Triassic specimens in the near future.

In another part of the museum, Dr. Kimberly Tait, associate curator of the mineralogy department, gave CityNews.ca a sneak preview of the specimens, including massive gems and meteorites, going on display this December in the new Teck Cominco Suite of Earth Sciences Galleries.

Tait pulled some incredible pieces out of the department's vault, including a rare 800-carat Cerussite stone - the largest faceted specimen of this kind in the world - and an exquisite Bulgari diamond spring claw-mounted broach. The famous designer only fashioned six or seven of these pieces with the large coloured diamonds. Elizabeth Taylor owns one.

The Bulgari piece.

While they're not considered precious, the collection of bizarre-looking aegirine minerals being prepared for display are just as pleasing to the eye.

These small, shiny black rocks that can have thin spikes are chiseled out of cliff faces in Malawi. Tait describes them as chemical leftovers.

"These elements won't go into these other basic minerals, so you get kind of funky stuff at the end, these weird minerals that you wouldn't expect," she said.

An especially exciting part of this upcoming exhibit is the meteorite collection, which will be the first comprehensive display of space rocks in the museum's history.

Mineralogy technician Ian Nicklin pulled a large 1.1 kilogram rock from a cabinet and stated: "This is actually a piece of the moon."

The ROM's lunar meteorite.

That heavy chunk is one of only about 30 distinct lunar meteorites in the world.

Nicklin also showed off a smaller space rock, one believed to have landed on Earth after being knocked off the planet Mars.

"Most likely, the most reasonable explanation for this is that it's from Mars," he explained.

If you think you've stumbled upon a meteorite or some kind of mineral of interest, both Tait and Nicklin noted the museum's I.D. clinics. These events provide a chance for the public to have their finds evaluated and inspected by a professional. These clinics are not for appraisal purposes.

To find out when you can have your finds inspected, click here.

The ROM is open:

Monday to Thursday: 10:00 am - 5:30 pm
Friday: 10:00 am - 9:30 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 10:00 am - 5:30 pm

For admission prices, click here.

According to the report noted above, entitled "City of Toronto Premier-Ranked Tourist Destination Project Research Summary and Recommendations", of the Canadian and American tourists that travelled to Toronto between January and June of 2006, 57 percent of Canuck and 54.3 percent of U.S. visitors went to exhibits observed architecture and visited historic sites on their Hogtown vacation.

shawne.mckeown@chumtv.com

Check back Wednesday to find out why the Ontario Science Centre is worth rediscovering with your kids.