Dippy

'' on December 11, 1898. It was this article which first caught Carnegie's attention; in the margin of his copy he wrote to William Holland: “can you buy this for Pittsburgh?” The fanciful pictures were scaled up versions of Marsh's 1883 drawing of Brontosaurus. The genus Diplodocus was first described in 1878 by Othniel Charles Marsh. The skeleton was found in 1898 in the upper of the Talking Rock facies of the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation, in Albany County, Wyoming. In 1900, John Bell Hatcher was hired by William Jacob Holland as curator of paleontology and osteology for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, succeeding Jacob Lawson Wortman. Hatcher supervised the field expeditions, excavations, investigation and display of Dippy, and named the species for Carnegie. Hatcher's monograph on the find was published in 1901 as Diplodocus Marsh: Its Osteology, Taxonomy, and Probable Habits, with a Restoration of the Skeleton. It is a composite skeleton comprising: • CM 84: the majority of the skeleton, named Diplodocus carnegii, and published in 1901 by Hatcher • some foot and limb bones of a Camarasaurus == Pittsburgh display ==

The original skeleton has been on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History since April 1907, two years after the first cast was shown. The delay was due to construction work at the Pittsburgh museum, which needed expansion in order to house Dippy. Today, the skeleton is part of the Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition. == Casts ==

Background Industrialist Andrew Carnegie financed the acquisition of the skeleton in 1898, as well as the donation of the casts at the beginning of the 20th century. Carnegie paid to have casts made for display in many European capitals – including Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Bologna, St Petersburg and Madrid; one sent to Munich was never erected – as well as Mexico City and La Plata in Argentina, making Dippy the most-viewed dinosaur skeleton in the world. His great-grandson, William Thomson, was quoted in 2019 explaining the donations: "By gifting copies to the heads of state of seven other countries as well as the UK, Carnegie hoped to demonstrate through mutual interest in scientific discoveries that nations have more in common than what separates them. He used his gifts in an attempt to open inter state dialogue on preserving world peace – a form of Dinosaur diplomacy." As director of the Carnegie Museums, William Holland supervised the donations of the casts. His trip to Argentina in 1912 was recorded by Holland in his 1913 travel book To the River Plate and Back. Holland noted a poem which had become popular among college students: List of casts == London cast ==

Early history The London cast of Dippy came about when King Edward VII, then a keen trustee of the British Museum, saw a sketch of the bones at Carnegie's Scottish home, Skibo Castle, in 1902, and Carnegie agreed to donate a cast to the Natural History Museum as a gift. Carnegie paid £2,000 for the casting in plaster of paris, copying the original fossil bones held by the Carnegie Museum (not mounted until 1907, as a new museum building was still being constructed to house it).The 292 cast pieces of the skeleton were sent to London in 36 crates, and the long exhibit was unveiled on May 12, 1905, to great public and media interest, with speeches from the museum director Professor Ray Lankester, Andrew Carnegie, Lord Avebury on behalf of the trustees, the director of the Carnegie Museum William Jacob Holland, and finally the geologist Sir Archibald Geikie. The cast was mounted in the museum's Reptile Gallery to the left of the main hall (until recently the gallery of Human Biology) as it was too large to display in the Fossil Marine Reptile Gallery (to the right of the main hall). The cast in London became an iconic representation of the museum, and has featured in cartoons and other media, including the 1975 Disney comedy One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing. Move to Hintze Hall Dippy was removed from the Reptile Gallery in 1979 and repositioned as the centrepiece of the main central hall of the museum, later renamed the Hintze Hall in recognition of a large donation by Michael Hintze. Removal from Natural History Museum and tour After 112 years on display at the museum, the dinosaur replica was removed in early 2017 to be replaced by the long skeleton of a young blue whale, dubbed "Hope". The whale had been stranded on sandbanks at the mouth of Wexford Harbour, Ireland in March 1891. Its skeleton was acquired by the museum and had been displayed in the Large Mammals Hall (originally the New Whale Hall) since 1934. The work involved in removing Dippy and replacing it with the whale skeleton was documented in a BBC Television special, Horizon: Dippy and the Whale, narrated by David Attenborough, which was first broadcast on BBC Two on July 13, 2017, the day before the whale skeleton was unveiled for public display. Dippy started a tour of British museums in February 2018, mounted on a new, more mobile armature. Dippy has been on display at locations around the United Kingdom: • Dorset County Museum, Dorchester (10 February – 7 May 2018) • Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (26 May – 9 September 2018) • Ulster Museum, Belfast (17 September 2018 – 6 January 2019) • Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow (22 January – 6 May 2019) • Great North Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne (18 May – 6 October 2019) • National Museum Cardiff (19 October 2019 – 26 January 2020) • Number One Riverside, Rochdale (10 February – 26 March and 7 September – 12 December 2020) • Norwich Cathedral (13 July – 30 October 2021) In February 2023, it was moved to Coventry as a long-term loan to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in 2023. A new bronze cast of Dippy, named Fern, has stood in the garden of the Natural History Museum since 2024. == Gallery ==

File:Diplodocus Carnegii Lithograph.tif|John Bell Hatcher's 1901 lithograph of Dippy, from the first issue of Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History File:A catalogue of portraits, paintings and sculpture at the Natural History Museum, London (1995) (20395912490).jpg|1905 (24 May) Punch cartoon by Edward Tennyson Reed of Dippy with Natural History Museum director Ray Lankester File:Mr. Carnegie's Imitation Dinosaur "Makes a Hit" in England.jpg|1905 (June 4) New York Times coverage of the London cast File:PSM V72 D444 Diplodocus carnegiei hatcher.png|1908, at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh File:Dippy 1908 in Paris.jpg|1908 work on the cast of Dippy in Paris; Arthur Goggeshall and William Holland at front center File:A Short History of the World, p0047.jpg|1922 image from H. G. Wells's A Short History of the World == See also ==