Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, home to the Tyrannosaurus rex holotype and a famous Diplodocus, will benefit from Carole and Daniel Kamin’s donation.Carole Kamin first walked through the doors of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1975 after taking a job as a buyer for the Pittsburgh museum’s gift shop. Awe-struck by the fossils on display, she would style herself as a “dinosaur queen” for the next 20 years.She sourced dino-patterned fabric from India for barbecue aprons. She worked with a toy manufacturer to produce models of the museum’s ancient creatures. She persuaded a candy supplier to make caramel-filled “Sweet Beasts.”Now Kamin and her husband, Daniel, are donating $25 million toward renovating the museum, which was founded in 1895 and has one of North America’s largest museum collections of fossils. The gift comes at a time when dinosaurs are as firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist as ever, thanks in part to record-setting fossil auctions and blockbuster films.The Carnegie museum’s holdings include the species-defining fossils — known as holotypes — of the terrifying predator Tyrannosaurus rex and the giant herbivore Apatosaurus louisae.It also displays arguably the most famous dinosaur skeleton on Earth: the remains of Diplodocus carnegii, a long-necked dinosaur found in 1899 during an expedition funded by the steel baron and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Replica casts of the dinosaur, known as “Dippy,” reside in museums around the world.The Diplodocus carnegii skeleton at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is known as “Dippy.” Replica casts of the dinosaur reside in museums around the world.via Carnegie Museum of Natural History; Photo by Joshua Franzos, Treehouse MediaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More