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Currents
December 2019
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Road (the main), or from Exhibition Road, or
Queen’s Gate. The current red brick building, dating
from 1881, is staffed by some 850 employees.
The Museum, the pre-eminent center of natural
history research in the world, holds 36 galleries
organized within five disciplines, and identified by
colored “zones:” Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy,
Paleontology, and Zoology. Some specimens were
collected by Charles Darwin, others date from collec-
tions begun in the 1600s.
In 1905, a replica skeleton of Diplodocos carnegii,
“Dinny,” 105 feet long, was installed to greet visitors
in the main hall. The original skeleton, acquired by
industrialist Andrew Carnegie, was copied, and gifted
by Carnegie to London’s museum. In 2017, Dippy
was replaced by the 75-foot-long ten-ton skeleton of
a blue whale. This skeleton, suspended high in the
Large Mammals Hall, is in the “Blue Zone” [see
photo].
Some galleries hold special gatherings: the
world’s largest collection of colored diamonds, the
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