Dippy goes on UK tour
Famous dinosaur packed up for three-year round Britain trip, including Scottish stop
IT’S as long as two buses and is set for a monster tour of Britain. Dippy the Diplodocus, a huge plaster dinosaur skeleton from London’s Natural History Museum, is going on a three-year round UK trip. And Dippy’s stopovers will include Glasgow. It will be the first time the 26-metre long, 4.17m high Dippy will have gone on public display beyond the museum since arriving there in 1905. Dippy is made from plaster of Paris and resin and was cast from the bones of a Diplodocus carnegii, thought to have roamed North America about 150million years ago. The species was named after the Dunfermline-born US industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
It was Carnegie who donated a cast of the original skeleton to the Natural History Museum, where it towered over the main hall until it was replaced by the skeleton of a blue whale in 2015.
Dippy’s first tour stop is Dorchester, where it will be on display for three months.
Lorraine Cornish, from the Natural History Museum, said: “It has been a lot of work to plan this with all the venues.
“Although the dinosaur has 292 bones, Dippy comes together in 86 pieces.
“It took two weeks to put Dippy together.
“But it is great for people to be able to come and see Dippy in a venue outside of London.”
After Dorchester, the next stops are Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff, Rochdale and Norwich. It is estimated five million people will see Dippy during the tour.