13 December 2013

Misty the Dinosaur comes to Denmark

CHRISTMAS PRESENT OF THE YEAR

The buyer of the gigantic dinosaur ‘Misty’ was kept anonymous when the giant was sold at an auction in London two weeks ago. Now the Natural History Museum of Denmark can reveal that it received the Christmas present of the year thanks to a donation from the Obel Family Foundation. The 17-meter-long dinosaur belongs to the species Diplodocus. It was a long-necked, peaceful, herbivorous giant who lived in western North America about 150 million years ago.

image of Misty the Dinosaur

Photo: Summers Place Auctions

Only very few museums in the world display similarly genuine and almost complete skeletons of the Diplodocus.

‘To own a giant dinosaur is of course the dream of any natural history museum. In order to understand nature and the world we live in, we have to understand the past. And more than anything else, a dinosaur is an object that connects us with the distant past, when the world looked very different’, says Morten Meldgaard, Director of the Natural History Museum.

An object that fascinates us

image of Misty the Dinosaur

Photo: Anders Drud, Natural History Museum of Denmark

The price of the giant was DKK 4.3 million (GBP 400,000), and it is thanks to a generous donation from the Obel Family Foundation that the museum has been able to acquire this unique fossil.

‘I think it is quite obvious and right that the Natural History Museum of Denmark should own a dinosaur. So when we suddenly had the opportunity to give the museum this early Christmas present, we jumped at the chance’, says Christen Obel, Chairman of the Obel Family Foundation, adding:

‘Misty is an iconic object that fascinates us, and the dinosaur will certainly create value for the museum for many generations to come.’