Dippy the Dinosaur

Outside of the Carnegie Institute and Library in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh is a dinosaur with a Twitter feed.  @dippy_the_dino has a lot to say, having been around (more or less) for 150 million years.

Affectionately known as “Dippy the Dinosaur” (that’s Diplodocus carnegii to you, sir!), Dippy is a life-size statue of the museum’s first dinosaur find. Having been discovered in 1899 by a team of scientists, and assembled by the benefactor of the Institute, Andrew Carnegie, the statue of Dippy was erected in front of the Museum in 1999 to celebrate his 100th anniversary as the patron dinosaur of Pittsburgh.   

The diplodocus was a vegetarian dino who stripped vegetation clean off of branches, and maybe even dunked under water to grab aquatic plants. Their unusual array of teeth, coupled with their tiny heads, show that they didn’t require the strength of mighty jaws to chew. They preferred their salads whole, and swallowed it all with hardly a chomp.

This particular diplodocus may be fiberglass by birth, but the real thing had the strength of a suspension bridge in those vertebrae – from their long necks to the end of their powerful tails. But Dippy the Dinosaur has something on his prehistoric inspirations - he’s not going to be extinct any time soon.