University of Bristol

Mike Taylor

I am co-authoring a manuscript that, among other things, tries to trace
the history of the molds made by the Carnegie Museum in the early 1900s,
from which they cast numerous replica skeletons of the *Diplodocus
carnegii* mount (CM 84, CM 94, CM 307 and other contributing specimens).
This turns out to be quite a mystery, and I have become fascinated by
it.

Below is the relevant section of the manuscript as it now stands. Can
anyone out there shed any further light on the mystery?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

So far as we have been able to determine, the casting of the concrete
*Diplodocus* of Vernal was probably the last time the Carnegie Museum's
original molds were used. However, that was not Untermann's intention.
In his 1959 account, he wrote (p368--369):

> Several museums in the United States and from lands as distant as
> Japan and Italy have expressed a desire to acquire the molds and cast
> a *Diplodocus* of their own from either plaster or some of the newer
> synthetics. To date no museum has apparently been able to make
> satisfactory arrangement for the acquisition of the molds and the
> casting of a skeleton. We still have the molds in Vernal, and any
> museum, anywhere, is welcome to them just for hauling them off.
> \[...\] The Diplodocus on the lawn of the Utah Field House is the
> eleventh replica to be cast from the molds \[...\] Does anyone wish to
> cast the twelfth?

From here, though, the story becomes contradictory. Sassaman (1988)
reported that "the molds finally fell apart because of old age soon
after it \[the concrete *Diplodocus*\] was made". Similarly, Ilja
Niewland (pers. comm., 2022) said that "The original moulds were thrown
away somewhere during the 1960s (nobody at the \[Carnegie Museum\] could
be more specific than that)", suggesting that the molds may have been
returned to their origin.

Both these accounts seem to be in error, as shown by a 1960 report in
the *Vernal Express* newspaper (Anonymous 1960a; Figure H; see also Carr
and Hansen 2005). This says that in the middle of July 1960, the molds
were collected by the Rocky Mount Children's Museum (now the Rocky Mount
Imperial Center, Children's Museum & Science Centre) in North Carolina,
with the intention that they would be used to create a twelfth cast
which would be mounted outside the museum building next to the Tar River
in Rocky Mount's Sunset Park. But was such a cast ever created? A
sequence of reports in the Rocky Mount Evening Telegram from April to
July 1960 (Williams 1960, Bell 1960a, Bell 1960b, Anonymous 1960b)
enthusiastically announce and discuss the impeding arrival, and the
later articles say that museum board president Harold Minges has left
for Utah to collect to molds --- but then the newspaper goes silent on
the subject, and the project is never mentioned again. There is no
positive evidence that the molds even arrived in Rocky Mount, far less
that they were used to create a new mount. Thus newspaper reports from
both Utah and North Carolina say that the molds set out on their journey
from one to the other, but neither confirms that they ever arrived. On
the other hand, there is also no report of the molds being lost or
destroyed, so perhaps the most likely interpretation is that they
arrived in Rocky Mount, but were found to be in worse condition than
expected and quietly left in storage. This interpretation is supported
by Rea (2001:210) who reported that "from Vernal the molds kept
travelling --- first, to the Rocky Mount Children's Museum in Rocky
Mount, North Carolina, although a cast was never made there". Similarly,
Moore (2014:234-235) stated that "From Vernal, Utah, \[CM\] molds of
*Diplodocus carnegii* are shipped to Rocky Mount Children's Museum in
Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Because of the age-related damage to the
molds, a cast was never prepared".

Hurricane Floyd devastated Rocky Mount in 1999, with flooding from the
River Tar destroying the original Children's Museum along with all its
exhibits and records (Leigh White, pers. comm., 2022), so no records
survive that could confirm the molds' arrival or any subsequent use. The
museum was located next door to a municipal water treatment facility
that also flooded and released unknown chemicals, so museum property
that might have otherwise been salvageable in that area was deemed
contaminated and required to be destroyed. If the molds were in storage
at the Children's Museum at this time, then this was likely the end of
their story.

The Children's Museum was re-established at the newly built Imperial
Centre, where it still resides, but no trace exists there of molds or
casts of *Diplodocus*. Corroborating the hypothesis that no cast ever
existed, most staff who worked at the museum in the 1980s do not recall
any such cast (Leigh White, pers. comm., 2022). Contradicting this,
however, Jan Engle Hicks, Curator of Education at the Rocky Mount
Children's Museum from 1971--2002, has a memory of *Diplodocus* casts
being on exhibit at the museum when she started work in 1971. She does
not recall if they were still part of the museum collection in 1999 when
the collection was destroyed.

Whether or not a cast was made at Rocky Mount, it is possible that this
was not the end for the molds. Rea (2001:210) continues: "Eventually the
molds found their way to the Houston Museum of Science, where they were
used to fill in gaps in the *Diplodocus* *hayi* skeleton that had been
swapped from Pittsburgh to Cleveland before ending up in Houston",
citing a personal communication from John S. McIntosh. (The skeleton in
question is that of CM 662, which became CMNH 10670 in Cleveland, then
HMNS 175 in Houston. Having been nominated as the holotype of the new
species *Diplodocus* *hayi* by Holland (1924:399), the species was later
moved to its own new genus *Galeamopus* by Tschopp et al. (2015:267).)

Due to the loss of the Rocky Mount Children's Museum records, we cannot
tell whether they ever shipped the molds to Houston; and we have not
been able to obtain information from the Houston Museum. Brian Curtice
(pers. comm., 2022) reports that he was in Houston in 1995 and did not
see the molds in the collection, nor hear of their ever having been
there. In the absence of evidence that the molds ever made it to
Houston, it seems at least equally likely that the missing bones in HMNS
175 were cast and supplied by Dinolab, using the second-generation molds
described blow, and that Rea (2001) misreported this.

As recently as 1988, Rolfe (1988) wrote on behalf of the Royal Museum of
Scotland, "At present I am exploring the possibility of re-using the
Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh moulds, although there is considerable doubt
about whether they are up to the job, after so much previous use".
Sadly, his letter does not mention their then-current whereabouts.

In an unpublished manuscript, Madsen (1990:4) wrote that "The fate of
the initial set of molds is somewhat in question, but Wann Langston
(personal communication, 1989) suggests that they seem to have been
lost, strayed, or stolen during transport from ? to ?. Principles
contacted in regards to the disposition of the molds could not provide
specific information.". Infuriatingly, the question marks are in the
original. Since both Langston and Madsen are now deceased, there is no
way to discover on which of the molds' journeys Langston thought they
were lost or destroyed. It is unlikely, at least, that Langston had in
mind the their initial journey from Vernal to Rocky Mount. Kirby
(1998:4) wrote that "Somewhere along the line, as the story goes, the
molds received from the Carnegie had been shipped to a school down south
and never arrived. So they were lost". Since Rocky mount is about 2000
miles east (not south) of Vernal, "a school down south" could not have
referred, in a Utah publication, to a museum out east. The Houston
museum also does not seems an especially likely candidate for this
designation, being 1300 miles southeast of Vernal.

[]{#__DdeLink__7953_1817233446}Putting it all together, there is no way
that all the reports cited here can be accurate. Perhaps the most likely
scenario is this: the molds were successfully shipped to Rocky Mount in
July 1960 (Anonymous 1960a, Anonymous 1960b) but found to be unusable
(Rea 2001:210, Moore 2014:234-235) and left in storage. At some later
point there were shipped to a school in a southern state (Kirby 1998:4)
but did not arrive (Langston cited in Madsen 1990:4). This may have
happened in late 1988 or early 1989, between Rolfe's (1988) letter that
expressed an interest in using the molds and Langston's personal
communication to Madsen in 1989. Where the molds are now, and why they
did not arrive, we can only speculate. As Madsen (1990:4) concluded, "It
is truly a mystery that an estimated 3--6 tons of plaster molds could
simply vanish!"

# References {#references .western}

Anonymous. 1960a. Dinosaur molds take long ride to No. Carolina
children's home. *Vernal Express*, 14 July 1960, page 15.
[[<https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6zk6w6s/21338221>]{.underline}]{style="color:#000080;"}

Anonymous. 1960b. Something 'big' for a fact. *Rocky Mount Evening
Telegram*, 8 July 1960, page 4A.
[[<https://newspaperarchive.com/rocky-mount-evening-telegram-jul-08-1960-p-4/>]{.underline}]{style="color:#000080;"}

Bell, Mae. 1960a. Dinosaur's coming here brings questions galore. *Rocky
Mount Evening Telegram*, 14 May 1960, page 2.
[[<https://newspaperarchive.com/rocky-mount-evening-telegram-may-14-1960-p-2/>]{.underline}]{style="color:#000080;"}

Bell, Mae. 1960b. 'Dinosaur' soon to arrive here. *Rocky Mount Evening
Telegram*, 3 July 1960, page 3A.
[[<https://newspaperarchive.com/rocky-mount-evening-telegram-jul-08-1960-p-8/>]{.underline}]{style="color:#000080;"}

Carr, Elaine, and Aric Hansen. 2005. William Randolf Turnage, Dee Hall,
and Ernest Untermann \[archive photograph with metadata\]. University of
Utah, J. Willard Marriott Digital Library, image 1086142.
[[<https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1086142>]{.underline}]{style="color:#000080;"}

Holland, William J. 1924. The skull of *Diplodocus*. *Memoirs of the
Carnegie Museum* **9(3)**:379--403.

Kirby, Robert. 1998. Danny and the dinosaurs. *Chamber Spirit*
(newsletter of the Vernal area Chamber of Commerce)
**3(4)**[:1--6.](https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s62v6594/22643733)

Madsen, James H. 1990. *Diplodocus carnegiei*: Production and design of
replica skeletons. Unpublished draft manuscript. (No author is named in
the manuscript, but Madsen's son Chris believes it is his work.)

Moore, Randy. 2014. *Dinosaurs by the Decades: A Chronology of the
Dinosaur in Science and Popular Culture*. Greenwood, Westport,
Connecticut.

Rea, Tom. 2001. *Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew
Carnegie's Dinosaur*. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA.

Rolfe, William D. I. 1988. Untitled letter to LuRae Caldwell (Utah Field
House). 24 October 1988.

Sassaman, Richard. 1988. Carnegie had a dinosaur too. *American
Heritage* **39(2)**:72--73.

Tschopp, Emanuel, Octávio Mateus and Roger B. J. Benson. 2015. A
specimen-level phylogenetic analysis and taxonomic revision of
Diplodocidae (Dinosauria, Sauropoda). *PeerJ* **2**:e857.
doi:10.7717/peerj.857

Untermann, G. Ernest. 1959. A replica of *Diplodocus*. *Curator*
**2(4)**:364--369. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1959.tb00520.x

Williams, Oliver. Pre-historic dinosaur to tower over city; giant animal
four times taller than man. *Rocky Mount Evening Telegram*, 24 April
1960, page 3B.
[[<https://newspaperarchive.com/rocky-mount-evening-telegram-apr-24-1960-p-11/>]{.underline}]{style="color:#000080;"}


I am co-authoring a manuscript that, among other things, tries to trace the history of the molds made by the Carnegie Museum in the early 1900s, from which they cast numerous replica skeletons of the
<em>
 Diplodocus carnegii
</em>
mount (CM 84, CM 94, CM 307 and other contributing specimens). This turns out to be quite a mystery, and I have become fascinated by it.  Below is the relevant section of the manuscript as it now stands.

Rogue Scholar Beiträge

Help SV-POW!: what happened to the original Carnegie Diplodocus molds?