Diplodocus

Diplodocus had a long neck that it would have used to reach high and low vegetation, and to drink water. There’s been some debate over how it would have held such a long neck.

Scientists now think that ligaments running from the hip to the back of the neck would have allowed Diplodocus to hold its neck in a horizontal position without using muscles. The back bones are split down the middle, creating a space that could have held the ligaments.

Diplodocus had a very long, whip-like tail and it may have had narrow, pointed, bony spines lining its back.

Diplodocus translates as ‘double beam’. It refers to the dinosaur’s tail bones.

The bones underneath the tail, which in many other dinosaurs are straight and pointy, have a two-beamed shape in Diplodocus. They look a bit like an upside-down ‘V’.

The scientist who named Diplodocus thought it was the only dinosaur with this kind of bone, but later discoveries revealed many other long-necked dinosaurs had them too.

Diplodocus was a very large animal. In fact, it may have been one of the longest dinosaurs, partly due to its extremely long tail.

But comparing it to other long-necked giants of its day, it wasn’t the tallest. With its upward-sloping body shape, Giraffatitan stood around 25 metres tall and could eat leaves from the highest treetops.

Additionally, if we look across the entire history of dinosaurs, the enormous titanosaurs from the Late Cretaceous – such as Patagotitan and Dreadnoughtus – were much larger and heavier.

Nobody knows for sure why Diplodocus and other sauropod dinosaurs had such a unique body shape. Over the years, researchers have put forward different theories.

Diplodocus needed its whip-like tail for defence. So, one idea is that the long neck would act as a counterbalance and stop the dinosaur from being too heavy at one end. But many scientists today aren’t convinced.

Another theory is that because Diplodocus was so big and heavy, it would have been best for it to move around as little as possible to save its energy. A long neck enabled it to reach a wide array of food sources without having to move its body much.

So far, all Diplodocus bones have been unearthed in the Morrison Formation – a fossil site that spans several states in the USA.

Many other well-known Jurassic dinosaurs have also been found there, including Allosaurus, Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus.

When Diplodocus was alive the environment was hot and dry, like a savannah. There were many tree ferns and cycads, as well as lots of non-dinosaur life such as frogs, lizards, turtles and flying reptiles called pterosaurs.

In 1905, the wealthy businessman Andrew Carnegie donated a cast of a Diplodocus skeleton to us. It was based on the original specimen in the Carnegie Museum in the USA.

King Edward VII had requested a copy of the newly discovered dinosaur after seeing a picture of it in Carnegie’s Scottish castle. From 1979 to early 2017 the cast – known affectionately as Dippy – was on display in our Hintze Hall.

In 1993, Dippy’s tail was lifted from the ground after research revealed that Diplodocus tails would have been raised.

Every two years or so, our experts used specialist equipment to clean the 292 bones that make up Dippy. It took two staff two days to clean and maintain the cast for future generations to enjoy.

In January 2017, Dippy left the Natural History Museum to prepare for a UK tour. After returning briefly in 2022, the famous cast is now on show at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, on long-term loan.

In July 2024, we unveiled a full-size bronze version of Carnegie’s skeleton in our gardens. Read the story about how it was made.

Children from local community groups helped to name this shiny new Diplodocus. Thanks to their creativity, it’s called Fern.

You can visit Fern the Diplodocus, supported by Kusuma Trust, in our gardens.