Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie's Dinosaur is a 2001 nonfiction book by Tom Rea detailing a partial history of the Bone Wars, specifically the late-Victorian scientific drama surrounding the diplodocus skeleton "Dippy". [1]
This skeleton was one of the most famous dinosaur skeletons ever discovered. Named Diplodocus carnegii for Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American industrialist, it is arguably the first complete dinosaur ever seen by millions of people. The fossil was discovered and eventually acquired by a team from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History during an expedition to the badlands of Wyoming. After the fossil was Uncovered on July 4, 1899, team member Arthur Coggeshall joked that it should be called "Star-Spangled Dinosaur" because of its July 4 "birthday". Andrew Carnegie's friends dubbed it "Dippy". The name has stuck ever since.
The paleontologist John Bell Hatcher (1861–1904) oversaw the study of the fossil and its preparation for display. His illustration of the skeleton hung on a wall at Carnegie's Skibo Castle in Scotland. When in 1902 the English King Edward VII (1841–1910) visited, he asked if Carnegie could obtain another dinosaur like Dippy for him to place in the British Museum. It was a rare find, of course, but Carnegie offered the king a plaster copy, which was installed May 12, 1905 in London. The original bones, however, were not prepared and erected at the Carnegie in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania until 1907.
Kaiser Wilhelm II and other European royalty followed suit and asked for Diplodocus carnegii copies for their national museums. During the next 25 years replicas were installed in Berlin, Germany; Paris, France; Vienna, Austria; Bologna, Italy; St. Petersburg, Russia; La Plata, Argentina; Madrid, Spain; and Mexico City, Mexico, making Dippy the first dinosaur specimen to be duplicated so frequently and internationally for viewing by the masses.
For more than a century Dippy has remained the Carnegie Museum's most iconic specimen. In 1999, to pay tribute to the 100th anniversary of its discovery, the Carnegie created a life-size fiberglass sculpture of Diplodocus carnegii weighing 3,000 pounds, standing 22 feet, and measuring 84 feet in length. The sculpture is sited prominently on Schenley Plaza outside the museum, while the original fossil still stands indoors in Dinosaur Hall.
The book received reviews from publications including Isis , [2] Rocks & Minerals , [3] Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , [4] and Booklist . [5]
Apatosaurus is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Othniel Charles Marsh described and named the first-known species, A. ajax, in 1877, and a second species, A. louisae, was discovered and named by William H. Holland in 1916. Apatosaurus lived about 152 to 151 million years ago (mya), during the late Kimmeridgian to early Tithonian age, and are now known from fossils in the Morrison Formation of modern-day Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah in the United States. Apatosaurus had an average length of 21–23 m (69–75 ft), and an average mass of 16.4–22.4 t. A few specimens indicate a maximum length of 11–30% greater than average and a mass of approximately 33 t.
John Bell Hatcher was an American paleontologist and fossil hunter known as the "king of collectors" and best known for discovering Torosaurus and Triceratops, two genera of dinosaurs described by Othniel Charles Marsh. He was part of a new, professional middle class in American science, having financed his education with his labor while also being more educated than older fossil collectors. As such, he faced unique challenges throughout his long and productive career.
The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road.
Camarasaurus was a genus of quadrupedal, herbivorous dinosaurs and is the most common North American sauropod fossil. Its fossil remains have been found in the Morrison Formation, dating to the Late Jurassic epoch, between 155 and 145 million years ago.
The Natural History Museum is a natural history museum located in Berlin, Germany. It exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history and in such domain it is one of three major museums in Germany alongside Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt and Museum Koenig in Bonn.
Barosaurus was a giant, long-tailed, long-necked, plant-eating sauropod dinosaur closely related to the more familiar Diplodocus. Remains have been found in the Morrison Formation from the Upper Jurassic Period of Utah and South Dakota. It is present in stratigraphic zones 2–5.
The Carnegie Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896. Housing some 22 million specimens, the museum features one of the finest paleontological collections in the world.
Jurassic National Monument, at the site of the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, well known for containing the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur fossils ever found, is a paleontological site located near Cleveland, Utah, in the San Rafael Swell, a part of the geological layers known as the Morrison Formation.
The Wyoming Dinosaur Center is located in Thermopolis, Wyoming and is one of the few dinosaur museums in the world to have excavation sites within driving distance. The museum displays the Thermopolis Specimen of Archaeopteryx, which is the only real specimen of this genus on display outside of Europe.
The UW–Madison Geology Museum (UWGM) is a geology and paleontology museum housed in Weeks Hall, in the southwest part of the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. The museum's main undertakings are exhibits, outreach to the public, and research. It has the second highest attendance of any museum at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, exceeded only by the Chazen Museum of Art. The museum charges no admission.
Charles Whitney Gilmore was an American paleontologist who gained renown in the early 20th century for his work on vertebrate fossils during his career at the United States National Museum. Gilmore named many dinosaurs in North America and Mongolia, including the Cretaceous sauropod Alamosaurus, Alectrosaurus, Archaeornithomimus, Bactrosaurus, Brachyceratops, Chirostenotes, Mongolosaurus, Parrosaurus, Pinacosaurus, Styracosaurus ovatus and Thescelosaurus.
"Stan", also known by its inventory number BHI 3033, is a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil found in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota, just outside of Buffalo in 1987, and excavated in 1992. It is the fifth most complete T. rex fossil discovered to date, at more than 70% bulk. In October 2020, the fossil was sold for $31.8 million at auction, making it the most expensive dinosaur specimen and fossil ever sold. In March 2022 Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism stated that they had acquired Stan and were planning on displaying the fossil at a new museum of natural history scheduled to open in 2025.
Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the most iconic dinosaurs and is known from numerous specimens, some of which have individually acquired notability due to their scientific significance and media coverage.
Diplodocus was a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs, whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a Neo-Latin term derived from Greek διπλός (diplos) "double" and δοκός (dokos) "beam", in reference to the double-beamed chevron bones located in the underside of the tail, which were then considered unique.
Gustav Tornier was a German zoologist and herpetologist.
Galeamopus is a genus of herbivorous diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs. It contains two known species: Galeamopus hayi, known from the Late Jurassic lower Morrison Formation of Wyoming, United States, and Galeamopus pabsti, known from the Late Jurassic fossils from Wyoming and Colorado. The type species is known from one of the most well preserved diplodocid fossils, a nearly complete skeleton with associated skull.
The London cast of Dippy is a plaster cast replica of the fossilised bones of a Diplodocus carnegii skeleton, the original of which – also known as Dippy – is on display at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The 26-metre (85 ft) long cast was displayed between 1905 and 2017 in the Natural History Museum in London, becoming an iconic representation of the museum. It began a national tour of British museums in February 2018. Dippy returned to London in June 2022, and then moved to Coventry as a long-term loan to the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in 2023.
Dippy is a composite Diplodocus skeleton in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the holotype of the species Diplodocus carnegii. It is considered the most famous single dinosaur skeleton in the world, due to the numerous plaster casts donated by Andrew Carnegie to several major museums around the world at the beginning of the 20th century.