Mystery Museum Photo
5:23 pm
Can anyone provide information on the following photograph? Where it is, when it might have been taken, if it was part of a larger series, etc.?
David Baccadutre, the head of Graphics at the NMMNHS (and a talented designer and photographer himself), came across this old photograph and is looking for more information about it. Please leave a comment if you can provide any answers as to the provenance of this image. And thanks!
Update 4/9: Thanks to everyone with answers! It appears that this is a cast of Andrew Carnegie’s Diplodocus overlooking some stuffed crocodilians in the old Hall of Reptiles at the British Museum of Natural History. Pascal has links to other photos of the skeleton in the comments, and Mike Skrepnick has written in with another photograph of the same hall during while it appears to be under construction:
According to Mike, “The photo appears in a book by David Spalding called ‘Dinosaur Hunters’ by Key Porter books ( a Canadian pub. in Toronto ) 1993, in a section of photo plates between pg. 54 – 55. The caption confirms it’s Diplodocus carnegii at the BMNH, with a photo credit to the Carnegie, so I suspect they may have more of the ’series’ in their archives.”
Thanks to everyone who has written in so far. If you know of any more images from this time/place, keep ‘em coming!
I’d guess that it’s the American Museum of Natural History, circa 1920’s. Looks like Diplodocus to me. But my knowledge of archival paleo footage is scant at best!
It’s from the early 1900’s London Museum of Natural History:
http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/webimages/0/37000/700/37729_big.jpg
My first thought was the Carnegie, since they had the first Diplodocus mount, but their architecture is all wrong – as is the AMNH (no skylights). A google image search for “museum diplodocus skeleton” brought me this image:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/galleries/history-architecture/images/vu-gall-hist-index-im_3125_1.jpg
Looking at the larger field of view image, I wonder if it wasn’t also taken around 1905, perhaps by the same photographer. It appears that they’ve renovated the building and/or moved the Diplodocus since, and so modern photos no longer look the same.
One more link – you can probably get more info about the image from the museum’s image library:
http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?img=83508&frm=ser&search=37729&first=1
looks like it was after they cleared out all the chairs from the reptile hall, so I don’t know if it was part of the opening ceremonies pictures.
Heh, one last comment. This photo was probably taken after the one on the NHM’s website because there are no chairs visible center left, but the benches seen behind the skeleton on the NHM’s site are in its place. Although it’s conceivable the photo was taken right before they set up…
Pascal beat me to it.
It’s definitely the Natural History Museum in London – I’d recognise that stonework anywhere!
Hi Matt!
I just wanted to let you know that I’ve added your blog to the DinoBase Blogs page (http://dinobase.gly.bris.ac.uk/blogs.html). I hope this is ok. If you have any comments, questions or would like to change your description, let me know. My email address is on my blog.
Thanks! Sarda