Digging for two months in a dusty southwestern Wyoming quarry, paleontologists finally found what one of the world's richest men had demanded -- bones from the "most colossal animal ever." It was July 4, 1899.
On Monday, in an air-conditioned hall at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Oakland, artists wielding pencil-sized flathead screwdrivers carefully put that animal's bones back together.
Diplodocus carnegii is back in Pittsburgh.
"This is, basically, the dinosaur that started it all for the museum," said Matt Lamanna, assistant curator for vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie. "This is one of the most important dinosaurs in the world."
The 150-million-year-old, long-necked dinosaur -- measuring 84 feet from its stubby nose to the tip of its whip-like tail -- will become the centerpiece of the natural history museum's $36 million Dinosaurs in Their World exhibit, scheduled to open in November.
Diplodocus and 18 other complete dinosaur skeletons from the museum's Dinosaur Hall were taken apart two years ago and shipped to Phil Fraley Productions in Paterson, N.J., a company that specializes in cleaning and mounting fossils.
For the past few months, the bones have been returning to Pittsburgh in large wooden crates, to be reassembled in dynamic poses and surrounded by replicas of plants and animals they lived with.
The exhibit likely wouldn't have happened if industrialist Andrew Carnegie hadn't read a fabricated article in New York World in 1898.
As the story goes, Carnegie was in his New York apartment when he read a story announcing "Most Colossal Animal Ever on Earth Just Found Out West," accompanied by an illustration of a long-necked dinosaur standing on its hind legs to peer into the top window of the New York Met Life building.
Awed, Carnegie tore the article out and mailed it to William Holland, director of the modest natural history museum Carnegie had founded in three rooms of the Pittsburgh library three years earlier, along with instructions: "Buy this for Pittsburgh."
"There wasn't an eBay for dinosaurs back then," Lamanna said. "So Holland assembled a team and they went to Wyoming to find one."
The team included William Reed, the paleontologist who was said to have discovered the dinosaur in New York World's article. In Wyoming, with $10,000 of Carnegie's money, Reed confessed the paper's story was based on a single bone he found. There was no full skeleton.
Undeterred, the team pressed on beneath the July sun and found first a toe and then a giant pelvis. The dinosaur was named Diplodocus carnegii and shipped back to Pittsburgh. Carnegie had an entire museum built to house it.
Diplodocus showed the world that massive bones could be found in the western United States, and put Pittsburgh on the map as a dino-destination. By 1902, fossils were shipped to Pittsburgh by the trainloads.
One find was another long-necked dinosaur, Apatosaurus louisae -- named for Carnegie's wife, Louise.
In Dinosaurs in Their World, Diplodocus carnegii and Apatosaurus louisae are reunited, their telescopic necks curved toward each other so their skulls almost touch. A fierce, sharp-toothed Allosaurus is hot on their tails, poised to attack.
"It's amazing. The scale of these dinosaurs is insane," said exhibition technician Keny Marshall, moments after he reattached Diplodocus's skull to the base of its neck. "To be a part of putting these big guys together is incredible."
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