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Profile: Dippy the Diplodocus

Dippy the Diplodocus

08/01/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Profile, Dippy the Diplodocus

Mark Coles profiles Dippy the Diplodocus.

Mark Coles examines how Dippy the replica Diplodocus has become a national treasure.

It's the end of an era. 

Dippy the dinosaur has left the building. 

Gifted to King Edward VII in 1905, a 70 foot long cast of a fossilised dinosaur skeleton discovered in America has been on display at London's Natural History Museum for more than a century. 

It's become the country's most recognisable museum exhibit - seen by an estimated 90 million people. 

Now it's being replaced by the real skeleton of a giant blue whale...Dippy's 292 plaster cast bones setting off instead on a nationwide tour. 

On Profile this week, Mark Coles examines how Dippy the replica Diplodocus has become a national treasure. 

Producer Smita Patel
Researcher Beth Sagar-Fenton.

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