A dinosaur that’s four times heavier than Dippy the Diplodocus is going on display at the Natural History Museum this weekend, filling one of the museum’s larger galleries.
Patagotitan mayorum (c) Natural History Museum
Thought to be over 100 million years old, the 2.67 tonne cast of Patagotitan mayorum, the most complete gigantic dinosaur ever discovered, has arrived in London as the first stop in a European tour.
Unlike say when Dippy is on display when it’s kept within a fenced-off area, you will be able to walk right under the titanosaur and stand within its legs — or if you want to imagine it, underneath its bum.
The Natural History Museum happens to be where the “terrible lizards” were first called Dinosaurs, back in 1842 by the founding Director of the Natural History Museum. Titanosaurs were the biggest animals to walk to the Earth, and Patagotian mayorum is one of the biggest known titanosaurs. This example when alive will have weighed approximately 57 tonnes. That is more than nine African savannah elephants – the largest animals alive on land today.
That wasn’t enough to protect this dinosaur though, as they found evidence of a huge bite mark in its tail, which must have been serious to leave indentations deep into the bone.
Installing the titanosaur (c) Natural History Museum
As part of the research for the exhibition, Robin Hansen, one of the Museum’s mineral curators found a piece of stone that had been catalogued as a large piece of Indian quartz. It happened to be egg shaped, and after examinations by Dr Susie Maidment and Prof. Paul Barrett, palaeontologists at the Museum, it was confirmed to be a titanosaur egg.
The newly identified egg is now included in the exhibition.
Along with the skeleton and the egg, the museum has created a series of interactive displays — so you’ll be able to step inside a titanosaur’s body, push the heart to pump blood through the body, fill its lungs with air to discover how it breathed with such an enormous neck, and squeeze food through its gut to find out how it processed the mounds of food it ate.
The exhibition, Titanosaur opens on Friday and is at the Natural History Museum until next January.
- Adult: £16
- Child: £9
- Family (1+2): £27.25
- Family (1+3): £34.50
- Family (2+1): £32.95
- Family (2+2): £40
- Family (2+3): £47.25
- Concession (Student, Senior, Disabled person): £12.95
- Disabled Person Companion: Free
- Art Fund adult: £8
- Art Fund concession: £6.50
- School child: £4.00
You’re recommended to book tickets in advance from here.
The cast of Patagotitan mayorum has been provided to the Museum by the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio (MEF), Argentina.
The exhibition (c) Natural History Museum
