Dippy the dinosaur is on tour in Glasgow
- Published
Dippy the Diplodocus, a famous replica of a dinosaur, is on tour! He's moved from his home in London to Dorset, Birmingham, Belfast and is now being constructed in Glasgow. This is the only stop in Scotland on the dinosaur's tour around the United Kingdom.
At each location he must be put back together like a jigsaw puzzle by a team of experts from the Natural History Museum in London. He has 292 bones - that's 86 more bones than there are in the human body!
Dippy is 26 metres long - that's longer than two double-decker buses parked back-to-back!
He's been around for a long time, over 100 years in fact! The skeleton is not actually real - it's a copy of a skeleton found in 1898, in the United States. King Edward VII was so impressed by a drawing of the skeleton, a replica was created and thus Dippy came to the UK!
Dippy is one of ten replicas in the world. You can find other Dippys in France, Germany, Russia and Austria!
Natural History Museum conservator Lorraine Cornish works on Dippy's head, which has been transported by ferry from Belfast. The dinosaur is now on display in the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow.
The diplodocus has a long neck just like a giraffe (but longer) and tail. It was also a herbivore, which means it ate only plants and not any meat. It was alive during the Jurassic period.