Rearing Barosaurus
Late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago; mounted 1991
The first thing most visitors see is a dinosaur standing on its hind legs, its neck reaching almost to the ceiling of the entrance rotunda, fifteen metres above the floor. It is a Barosaurus, a long necked plant eater of the Jurassic, and it has reared up to protect its calf from an Allosaurus that crouches in front of it, jaws open. The scene is a dramatic guess at behaviour, but it makes a point immediately: these animals were vast, and they were alive.
The skeleton is a cast, made from the museum's own fossil, because real bone would be far too heavy to hold in this pose. Walk around it and look at the neck, which alone is longer than a city bus and made of vertebrae hollowed out like aircraft parts to save weight. The tail balances the neck, and the pillar like hind legs and broad hips show where the animal's weight rested. Whether a Barosaurus could really rear like this is still argued; some palaeontologists think the blood pressure needed to reach a raised head would have been impossible, others point out that elephants rise on their hind legs when they must.
The original bones were collected in Utah in 1923 and lay in storage for decades. The mount was installed in 1991 as part of the restoration of the rotunda, which was built in 1936 as a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, the president whose father helped found the museum. The murals around the walls show episodes from Roosevelt's life, and the quotations carved in the stone are his.
Did You Know? The rearing Barosaurus is the tallest freestanding dinosaur mount in the world.
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