Why the UK loves Dippy the Dinosaur so much
Dippy – a complete cast of a diplodocus skeleton – is Britain's most famous dinosaur. It has resided at the Natural History Museum in London since 1905 and is now on show in Coventry where it is 'dinosaur-in-residence' at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum.
Dippy, the star attraction in the huge entrance hall of the Natural History Museum from 1979 to 2018, i s now on tour around the UK, with Coventry as its latest stop. It had previously been shown in Dorchester, Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff, Rochdale, Norwich and London.
So what is it that makes Dippy so popular? I got a sense of the dino's appeal in August 2021 when I gave a lecture under the Dippy skeleton in Norwich Cathedral.
The lecture was about dinosaur feathers and colours. It highlighted new research that identified traces of pigment in the fossilised feathers of birds and dinosaurs. I wanted to highlight the enormous advances in the ways we can study dinosaurs that had taken place in just a century.
Before arriving, I thought that Dippy would fill the cathedral – after all the skeleton is 26 metres long and it had filled the length of the gallery at the Natural History Museum. However, Dippy was dwarfed by the gothic cathedral's scale. In fact, the building is so large that five Dippys could line up, nose to tail, from the great west door to the high altar at the east end.
This sense of awe is one of the key reasons to study palaeontology – to understand how such extraordinary animals ever existed.
I asked the Norwich cathedral canon why they had agreed to host the dinosaur, and he gave three answers. First, the dinosaur would attract lots of visitors.
Second, Dippy is from the Jurassic period, as are the rocks used to construct the cathedral. Finally, for visitors it shared with the cathedral a sense of awe because of its huge size. Far from being diminished by its temporary home, visitors still walked around and under Dippy sensing its grandeur.
Dippy arrived in London in 1905 as part of a campaign for public education by the Scottish-American millionaire Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919). At the time, there was a debate in academic circles about the function of museums and how far professionals should go in seeking to educate the public.
There was considerable reticence about going too far. Many professors felt that showing dinosaurs to the public would be unprofessional in instances where they moved from description of facts into the realm of speculation. They also did not want to risk ridicule by conveying unsupported information about the appearance and lifestyle of the great beasts. Finally, many professors simply did not see such populism as any part of their jobs.
But, at that time, the American Museum of Natural History was well established in New York and its new president, Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935) was distinctly a populist. He sponsored the palaeo artist Charles Knight (1874-1953), whose vivid colour paintings of dinosaurs were the glory of the museum and influential worldwide. Osborn was as hated by palaeontology professors as he was feted by the public.
Carnegie pumped his steel dollars into many philanthropic works in his native Scotland and all over America, including the Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. When he heard that a new and complete skeleton of a diplodocus had been dug up in Wyoming, he bought it and brought it to his new museum. It was named as a new species, Diplodocus carnegiei.
On a visit to Carnegie's Scottish residence, Skibo Castle, King Edward VII saw a sketch of the bones and Carnegie agreed to donate a complete cast of the skeleton to Britain's Natural History Museum.
The skeleton was copied by first making rubber moulds of each bone in several parts, then filling the moulds with plaster to make casts and colouring the bones to make them look real. The 292 pieces were shipped to London in 36 crates and opened to the public in May 1905. Carnegie's original Dippy skeleton only went on show in Pittsburgh in 1907, after the new museum building had been constructed.
Carnegie had got the royal bug and donated further complete Dippy casts to the great natural history museums in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Bologna, St Petersburg, Madrid, Munich, Mexico City and La Plata in Argentina. Each of these nations, except France, had a king or tsar at the time. The skeletons went on show in all these locations, except Munich, and Dippy has been seen by many millions of people in the past 120 years.
Dippy's appeal
Dippy's appeal is manifold. It's huge – we like our dinosaurs big. It has been seen up close by more people around the world than any other dinosaur. It also opens the world of science to many people. Evolution, deep time, climate change, origins, extinction and biodiversity are all big themes that link biology, geology, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
Also, since 1905, palaeontology has moved from being a largely speculative subject to the realms of testable science. Calculations of jaw functions and limb movements of dinosaurs can be tested and challenged. Hypotheses about physiology, reproduction, growth and colour can be based on evidence from microscopic study of bones and exceptionally preserved tissues, and these analyses can be repeated and refuted.
Dippy has witnessed over a century of rapid change and its appeal is sure to continue for the next.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Millionaire futurist creating 'mutant humans' reveals when new race will make ordinary people 'obsolete'
Humanity is on the verge of being replaced by a race of superhuman hybrids with powers only dreamt about in movies. Herbert Sim, a millionaire tech investor and futurist in London, has begun pouring his wealth into the study of transhumanism - the enhancement of humans through science and technology. Sim told that a new mutant race could be walking among ordinary humans within the next five years. At that point, Sim claims that the human race will essentially be obsolete as these real life 'X-Men' make it impossible for regular people to match their abilities. His tech start-up, has been exploring how to make transhumans a reality, upgrading the mind using a helmet that reads brainwaves. The brainwaves are projected onto a computer which then reads and turns them into actions. Sim said it's one of the first steps in 'upgrading' humanity, allowing this new race of mutants to live longer and defeat diseases. 'Transhumanism can help to extend your life for 500 years and then it's amazing to think what we can achieve,' Sim said. 'Humanity has now reached a point where we are at a crossroads and we're trying to accept technology into our lives to enhance our lifestyles,' the entrepreneur said. Although X-Men may still sound like something that only exists in science-fiction, animal-human hybrids (mutants) have already been created in Japan. In March 2019, Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology lifted a ban on creating animal embryos with human cells and allowing them to be brought to term in surrogate animals. This allowed stem cell biologist Hiromitsu Nakauchi from the University of Tokyo to inject human stem cells into rodent embryos, creating a hybrid that couldn't form a normal rodent pancreas. The goal of the project was to grow a human-compatible pancreas in these rodents instead, which could then be used for organ transplantation. 'All of this technology is here to help humans transcend and live longer,' Sim explained. 'These are possible superpowers that humans can have through the use of genetic technology,' he added. Sim compared the rare sight of a mutant in today's world to ancient humans claiming they saw dragons. While the accounts seem fantastic and hard to believe, the futurist argued that too many different cultures share the same stories and depictions of these mythical creatures for them to be fake. However, Sim warned that human mutants won't go extinct like the dragon presumably has; mutants will grow in numbers and eventually take over society. 'Because of these very dominant [new] races, they will be better than humans in every single way,' Sim revealed. 'The humans that are left over, they will not be able to contribute to society as effectively as these transhumans, and this is when humanity will then become obsolete,' he added. The topic of superpowered mutants has been a fantasy of the entertainment world for decades, with shows like X-Men and the Bionic Woman imagining how genetics and robotics could one day improve humanity. However, studies reveal that transhumans are already walking around society today. This month, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported in Science that they have created a new tool using CRISPR (a gene-editing method) to insert large pieces of DNA into human cells with incredible precision. This could be used to fix genetic diseases or even improve traits like extending longevity. In March, MIT scientists announced they figured out how to turn human skin cells directly into brain cells (neurons) without extra steps, making the process 100 times more efficient than before. They tested the new brain cells by putting them in mouse brains, where they worked perfectly. This could help fix brain damage in people with diseases like Parkinson's. In July 2022, a company called Synchron put a tiny chip in the brain of someone with ALS, a disease that makes it hard to move or speak. They inserted the chip through a vein in the neck, so it was less invasive than brain surgery. The chip let the person control things like a computer or phone just by thinking, like sending texts or browsing the web - similar to Sim's newest breakthrough in reading brainwaves. 'At the moment, lots of people have only seen this technology in films and see it as a downfall but I believe it's our redemption,' Sim said. 'The way I see it is that technology and science are here to empower humans the same way medicines and phones are here to make our lives better.'
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
The winners and losers in Rachel Reeves's spending review
"It's a big deal for this government," says Simon Case. "It's the clearest indication yet of what they plan to do between now and the general election, a translation of their manifesto. "This is where you should expect the chancellor to say, on behalf of the government: 'This is what we're about'." As the former cabinet secretary, Mr Case was the man in charge of the civil service during the last spending review, in 2021. On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves will unveil the Labour government's priorities for the next three years. But it's unclear whether it will provide all that much of an answer about what it's really about. Unlike the Autumn budget, when the chancellor announced her plans on where to tax and borrow to fund overall levels of spending, the spending review will set out exactly how that money is divided up between the different government departments. Since the start of the process in December those departments have been bidding for their share of the cash - setting out their proposed budgets in a negotiation which looks set to continue right up to the wire. This review is being conducted in an usual level of detail, with every single line of spending assessed, according to the chancellor, on whether it represents value for money and meets the government's priorities. Budget proposals have been scrutinised by so called "challenge panels" of independent experts. It's clear that health and defence will be winners in this process given pre-existing commitments to prioritise the NHS - with a boost of up to £30bn expected - and to increase defence spending. On Sunday morning, the government press release trumpeted an impressive-sounding "£86bn boost" to research and development (R&D), with the Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle sent out on the morning media round to celebrate as record levels of investment. 14:18 We're told this increased spending on the life sciences, advanced manufacturing and defence will lead to jobs and growth across the country, with every £1 in investment set to lead to a £7 economic return. But the headline figure is misleading. It's not £86bn in new funding. That £86bn has been calculated by adding together all R&D investment across government for the next three years, which will reach an annual figure of £22.5bn by 2029-30. The figure for this year was already set to be £20.4bn; so while it's a definite uplift, much of that money was already allocated. Peter Kyle also highlighted plans for "the most we've ever spent per pupil in our school system". I understand the schools budget is to be boosted by £4.5bn. Again, this is clearly an uplift - but over a three-year period, that equates to just £1.5bn a year (compared with an existing budget of £63.7bn). It also has to cover the cost of extending free school meals, and the promised uplift in teachers' pay. In any process of prioritisation there are losers as well as winners. We already know about planned cuts to the Department of Work and Pensions - but other unprotected departments like the Home Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government are braced for a real spending squeeze. We've heard dire warnings about austerity 2.0, and the impact that would have on the government's crime and policing priorities, its promises around housing and immigration, and on the budgets for cash-strapped local councils. The chancellor wants to make it clear to the markets she's sticking to her fiscal rules on balancing the books for day-to-day spending. But the decision to loosen the rules around borrowing to fund capital investment have given her greater room to manoeuvre in funding long-term infrastructure projects. That's why we've seen her travelling around the country this week to promote the £15.6bn she's spending on regional transport projects. The Treasury team clearly wants to focus on promoting the generosity of these kind of investments, and we'll hear more in the coming days. But there's a real risk the story of this spending review will be about the departments which have lost out - and the promises which could slip as a result.
Sky News
3 hours ago
- Sky News
Real risk Rachel Reeves's spending review will be about the departments that have lost out
"It's a big deal for this government," says Simon Case. "It's the clearest indication yet of what they plan to do between now and the general election, a translation of their manifesto. "This is where you should expect the chancellor to say, on behalf of the government: 'This is what we're about'." As the former cabinet secretary, Mr Case was the man in charge of the civil service during the last spending review, in 2021. On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves will unveil the Labour government's priorities for the next three years. But it's unclear whether it will provide all that much of an answer about what it's really about. Unlike the Autumn budget, when the chancellor announced her plans on where to tax and borrow to fund overall levels of spending, the spending review will set out exactly how that money is divided up between the different government departments. Since the start of the process in December those departments have been bidding for their share of the cash - setting out their proposed budgets in a negotiation which looks set to continue right up to the wire. This review is being conducted in an usual level of detail, with every single line of spending assessed, according to the chancellor, on whether it represents value for money and meets the government's priorities. Budget proposals have been scrutinised by so called "challenge panels" of independent experts. It's clear that health and defence will be winners in this process given pre-existing commitments to prioritise the NHS - with a boost of up to £30bn expected - and to increase defence spending. On Sunday morning, the government press release trumpeted an impressive-sounding "£86bn boost" to research and development (R&D), with the Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle sent out on the morning media round to celebrate as record levels of investment. 14:18 We're told this increased spending on the life sciences, advanced manufacturing and defence will lead to jobs and growth across the country, with every £1 in investment set to lead to a £7 economic return. But the headline figure is misleading. It's not £86bn in new funding. That £86bn has been calculated by adding together all R&D investment across government for the next three years, which will reach an annual figure of £22.5bn by 2029-30. The figure for this year was already set to be £20.4bn; so while it's a definite uplift, much of that money was already allocated. Peter Kyle also highlighted plans for "the most we've ever spent per pupil in our school system". I understand the schools budget is to be boosted by £4.5bn. Again, this is clearly an uplift - but over a three-year period, that equates to just £1.5bn a year (compared with an existing budget of £63.7bn). It also has to cover the cost of extending free school meals, and the promised uplift in teachers' pay. In any process of prioritisation there are losers as well as winners. We already know about planned cuts to the Department of Work and Pensions - but other unprotected departments like the Home Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government are braced for a real spending squeeze. We've heard dire warnings about austerity 2.0, and the impact that would have on the government's crime and policing priorities, its promises around housing and immigration, and on the budgets for cash-strapped local councils. The chancellor wants to make it clear to the markets she's sticking to her fiscal rules on balancing the books for day-to-day spending. But the decision to loosen the rules around borrowing to fund capital investment have given her greater room to manoeuvre in funding long-term infrastructure projects. That's why we've seen her travelling around the country this week to promote the £15.6bn she's spending on regional transport projects. The Treasury team clearly wants to focus on promoting the generosity of these kind of investments, and we'll hear more in the coming days. But there's a real risk the story of this spending review will be about the departments which have lost out - and the promises which could slip as a result.
