On This Day – April 18th

'Dippy' – a plaster of paris replica of a Diplodocus stood in the central hall of The Natural History Museum (which first opened on 18th April 1881) up until 2017. It quickly became an iconic representation of the museum, and has featured in many cartoons and other media, including the 1975 comedy film One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing.

Dippy was cast from a type-specimen named Diplodocus carnegii which was discovered in America in 1877 and acquired by Scottish-born millionaire Andrew Carnegie as a centrepiece for his museum in Pittsburgh.

King Edward VII saw a sketch of the Diplodocus during a visit with Carnegie at his Scottish castle. He remarked how much he'd like a similar specimen for the animal galleries of the Natural History Museum, to which Carnegie obliged by commissioning a replica cast of his dinosaur at a cost of £2,000 – around £175,000 today.

The 292-bone skeleton arrived in London in 36 packing cases and was unveiled to the public four months later in a lavish ceremony for 300 people, on Friday 12th May 1905. The cast was mounted in the museum's Reptile Gallery to the left of the main hall (now the gallery of Human Biology) as it was too large to display in the Fossil Reptile Gallery.

Dippy was removed from the Reptile Gallery in 1979 and repositioned as the centrepiece of the main central hall of the museum. It was originally displayed alongside a cast of a Triceratops skeleton, which was removed around 1993. The tail of the Diplodocus cast was also lifted to waft over the heads of visitors; originally it drooped to trail along the floor.

After 112 years on display at the museum, Dippy was removed in early 2017 and is, throughout 2018, undertaking a tour of museums around the UK.

Today's question is this – what replaced Dippy a the centrepiece of what is know known as the Hintze Hall?

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