Meet Dippy. The Diplodocus. Short for Diplodocus carnegii. I met him when I was about seven. Or eight. And fell in love-- or, to be more precise, "fell in awe." He died in Sheep Creek, Wyoming, but came to live in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. We lived an hour or so down the Ohio River, so I didn't get to visit him very often.
At least, not very often in Pittsburgh. But there are more of him. Andrew Carnegie financed the dig where he was found, and while the Carnegie Museum was still being built, King Edward VII was so impressed with the discovery, he asked Mr. Carnegie for a cast of the bones for London. Dippy Clone #1 met the public at a big formal reception at the Natural History Museum there in 1905. In 1907 Dippy Himself appeared in his new Carnegie Museum home, and it wasn't long before every king or head of state wanted a copy-- so there are now Dippys in the national museums in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, Spain, Mexico and Argentina.
Since 1979, I've managed to catch up with him on at least one Sunday afternoon every year or so on my visits to the U.K. Until this year, that is. I'd read newspaper reports last year that he had gone walk-about, and was still on tour, and had lost his place of honor in the great entrance hall to a the skeleton of a great blue whale! I was desolated! I am desolated. I'll be in London by next week, and he'll be in Northern Ireland, and in January in Scotland!
I leave London for Italy in November, so I guess I'll be visiting him in Rome this year.