Durham brontosaurus

Overview

The Durham brontosaurus is a life-sized papier-maché, concrete, and wire-mesh sculpture created by Dick Wescott for the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science (then known as the "Children's Museum") in Durham, NC in the late 1960s.

The brontosaurus is located just off what is now Rock Quarry Park on the Ellerbee Creek Trail, behind a damaged chain-link fence (as of 2010, some restoration has been done and the fence may have been repaired or removed).

The sculpture, now somewhat outdated scientifically (need details on this!), has been repeatedly vandalized but remained largely intact until sometime during the night of May 31, 2009 (or early the next morning), when vandals cut off the head. The head was recovered and police identified the vandals; it is not clear at this time what the Museum plans to do.

This page is in need of updating. The community came together and helped fund a restoration. There were t-shirts and other merchandise. Not sure what the site looks like now. The Museum was talking about reopening the trail, last I remember. --Woozle 11:44, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Sources

• htwiki:User:Harena's family was heavily involved with the Museum at the time Dick Wescott built the dinosaurs and the many other sculptures (maybe 15-20 in all -- hominids, iguanadon, paleosaur, tiger, orangutan, campteosaurus?...) along the Museum's pre-history trail (not sure what the official name; the animals were arranged in a time-line, it was colloquially known as the "dinosaur trail" and the Museum now refers to it as the "Old Dinosaur Trail").

Links

News

Photo from The Durham News showing the vandalism

• 2009-06-01 Durham's Museum of Life and Science dinosaur decapitated
• 2009-06-06 Vandals decapitate dinosaur at Durham's Museum of Life and Science, head is recovered (Pam Spaulding)
• 2009-06-10
  • Neighbors to meet over museum vandalism (Jim Wise)
  • Elder Wescott served as museum's mover and shaker (Jim Wise): article about Dick Wescott, the Prehistory Trail, and related topics
• 2009-06-12 Spoil the dino, spare the rod

Photos

• A walk through the old dinosaur trail, Rock Quarry Park
• flickr: Durham Dinosaur Sightings

Discussion

• 2007-02-12 Endangered Durham has some discussion about the dinosaur trail in the comments to an unrelated entry (about the Herald-Sun building downtown)