Learn how the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh acquired its many famous dinosaur skeletons, amassing one of the greatest dinosaur collections in the world.
1. 1898
After reading about a giant dinosaur skeleton found out West, Andrew Carnegie decides Pittsburgh must have one of its own. Carnegie Museum director William Holland sends a team of scientists to Wyoming for the Museum’s first dinosaur expedition.2. 1899 - 1900
On July 4, 1899, a toe bone is found near Sheep Creek, Wyoming which leads to the discovery of two well preserved long-necked sauropod dinosaur skeletons. The Sheep Creek discovery is shipped to the Carnegie Museum and named Diplodocus carnegii after its generous benefactor, Andrew Carnegie. Museum visitors will eventually nickname this gentle giant “Dippy.”3. 1901
Carnegie paleontologist Charles Whitney Gilmore finds a small sauropod skeleton later determined to belong to a baby Apatosaurus. The juvenile Apatosaurus is kept in the Museum’s collection for more than 100 years before finally being put on display in the museum's new Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit in 2007.4. 1902
Barnum Brown, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, discovers the type specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex in the Hell Creek Formation of eastern Montana. This specimen will eventually be acquired by Carnegie Museum of Natural History, where it is proudly housed today.5. 1905
The Carnegie Museum makes a cast of Diplodocus carnegii upon request for King Edward VII, to be exhibited in London’s British Museum of Natural History. “Dippy” is a sensation, and over the next 20 years, the Carnegie makes additional casts for museums in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Madrid, St. Petersburg, Bologna, La Plata, and Mexico City.6. 1907
Carnegie Museum unveils a massive new hall built specifically to properly display their prized dinosaur Diplodocus.7. 1909
Museum paleontologist Earl Douglass discovers the Carnegie Quarry in northeastern Utah, where 700,000 pounds of fossils of Jurassic Period dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Stegosaurus, Dryosaurus, Camptosaurus, and Allosaurus will be found over the course of a 13 year dig.8. 1915
Apatosaurus louisae, named for Andrew Carnegie’s wife Louise, is officially scientifically named and placed on exhibit in the Carnegie Museum’s Dinosaur Hall. The Hall, originally designed to hold only Diplodocus, is quickly filling with fossils from the Carnegie Quarry.President Woodrow Wilson designates the Carnegie Quarry, the greatest deposit of Jurassic dinosaur fossils ever found, as the centerpiece of Dinosaur National Monument.
