Efforts to transfer to aluminum the heterocyclic ligand of a ring-opened imidazole scandium complex, which was previously reported, are presented. A ring-opened imidazole aluminum compound was formed at 50 degrees C and characterized as a trialuminum complex. At high temperature (85 degrees C), the formation of an unusual scandium/aluminum methylidene was observed. The reaction products were characterized by standard spectroscopic techniques and X-ray crystallography. Density functional theory calculations were used to understand the electronic structure of the scandium/aluminum methylidene complex.