Dippy hits the road
A HUGE dinosaur skeleton has begun a tour of the UK which will eventually see it exhibited in Rochdale.
Dippy, a 26-metre long diplodocus had been on display since 1905 in the Natural History Museum in London, most recently in the Hintze Hall in the museum’s entrance from 1979 to 2017.
It has not before been publicly displayed outside the museum.
The skeleton is a cast made in the early 1900s from an original in Pennsylvania, USA.
It is an example of the Diplodocus carnegii species, which lived between 145 and 156 million years ago.
The species is named after Andrew Carnegie, a 19th-century industrialist and philanthropist who donated the cast to the Natural History Museum.
In its displayed pose, the skeleton - nicknamed Dippy - is 26m long, 4.3m wide and 4.17m high.
It took three weeks to dismantle the 292 bones, which are made of resin and plaster of Paris.
In place of the dinosaur, a blue whale skeleton is now displayed in the Hintze Hall.
The three-year tour has begun at the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester, Dorset, on the Jurassic Coast, famed for its fossils.
It will then be shown at museums and cathedrals in Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cardiff, before arriving in Rochdale where it will go on display at the council’s Number One Riverside headquarters from February to June 2020.