By Susan Bromley

Staff Writer

Brandon Twp.-A dinosaur first spotted last fall in the township has since been sighted more than 9 million times.

The T-Rex, identified as 8-year-old Ryan DePalma, has gained widespread fame after his parents, township residents Brad and Dana DePalma, recorded a less than 1-and-a-half minute video of him in costume riding his dirt bike.

The DePalmas posted it Oct. 30, 2015 to YouTube, titling it “Ryan riding his TTR50 dirt bike in a Jurassic Park T-Rex Tyrannosaurus Costume” and the video has gained almost 100,000 views there, but then really took off this spring.

“On May 1, a person wrote a message on YouTube, saying Ryan was getting more views than we thought, and linked coub.com,” recalls Dana. “It’s crazy. We’ve had fun watching this go viral.”

She believes the poster of that message is the one who spliced segments of Ryan’s video with the iconic scene from the 1993 film “Jurassic Park” where characters played by Laura Dern and Sam Neill first see living dinosaurs on the island. On coub.com, the recreated video is titled, “That Day They Started to Believe” and has more than 290,000 views.

The day after the DePalmas saw that video, a friend told them the new video had made it on to Off Topic, a Facebook page, with another nearly 300,000 views, and then consequently made it to Ebaum’s World on Facebook, where it has now has more than 9 million views as “Reminder of just how good Jurassic Park was,” and 19,000 shares. It also made a list of Chive Daily Morning Awesomeness. The original video of Ryan also made “For the Win,” in a USA Today

article titled, “100 activities that are 100 times more fun in a T-Rex costume.”

In the original video, Ryan is clad in the inflatable T-rex costume while riding his dirt bike in loops around his Brandon Township yard. The dinosaur’s head flops above his own, and in the video description, it is noted, “Needs a little more air pressure to keep the head up, but it still looks funny as heck with him riding around in it.”

Indeed, the sight invokes laughter, which can be heard from Ryan’s now 10-year-old sister, Kayla on the video.

Ryan said the wind blowing the head of his costume around just made him go a little slower— he had to stay in first gear.

“It makes me feel like I’m kind of famous,” said Ryan of the video, which was recorded when he was 7-years-old. “I’m lucky.”

He has since worn the costume while riding on his snowmobile. He is considering other costumes he might wear while riding, but for now is enjoying his dinosaur fame.

To see Ryan’s T-rex video, visit thecitizenonline.com.