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Dippy the diplodocus is finally coming home to the Natural History Museum

He’s been on tour since 2017

Andrzej Lukowski
Written by
Andrzej Lukowski
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Way back in 2017, the Natural History Museum’s iconic skeletal sauropod Dippy the diplodocus headed out on a very slow tour of the UK. Saying bye-bye to his home since 1905, the tour saw him take up residence in sundry museums and other venues across the country for months at a time, delighting the adorable little provincial children, but sadly depriving the young of London of his magnificence, with the status of NHM skeleton-in-chief ceded to Hope the blue whale. An impressive sight, to be sure, but not actually a dinosaur.

Anyway, after concluding his engagement in Norwich, the last stop of the tour, he’ll be gearing up to return to London – at least, temporarily.

Yes, his return from tour won’t be quite as simple as putting Hope back wherever they found her and settling the D-man back into his old digs. Initially he’ll be the focus of his own special free temporary exhibition that will celebrate him and the places he visited on tour: Dorchester, Birmingham, Rochdale… all the good places.

After that the NHM is remaining coy about plans: having just been seen by two million people across the country, you have to assume they won’t just shove him back into a box. But Hope is pretty damn spectacular and also looks like she’d be a right pain to take down.

Still Londoners young and old: rejoice that our prodigal 28-metre-long, 150-million-years-dead dinosaur son will soon return to us! Dates are very much TBC, but he should be in place by the summer.

For more information about Dippy’s tour, go here.

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