6-01-09: Dinosaur decapitated!

6-01-09: The Northgate Park (Durham, NC) Neighborhood Association email list received an email from a neighbor at 8:53am that she discovered the dinosaur [a life-size brontosaurus] on the old Museum of Life and Science trial had been decapitated during the night. The police were notified. A flurry of messages ensues, including an offer of $100 reward. The event gets Twittered. A generator, lights, and a live broadband link to the Smithsonian are offered for covering the reattachment after recovery of the head. I called the Museum (they heard, and were preparing a news release) and Bronto Software (they use the bronto as their company logo). A story appears on Channel 17 News just after 7PM.

6-02-09: Newspaper article in the (Durham NC) Herald-Sun:

By Neil Offen : The Herald-Sun
mailto:noffen@heraldsun.
Jun 2, 2009
DURHAM -- Maybe this is why they became extinct.

The towering brontosaurus that has stood astride the old Museum of Life and Science Dinosaur Trail in Northgate Park has lost its head. Sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning, vandals decapitated the steel and plaster behemoth.

"How senseless. How absolutely senseless," said Nancy Rizzo, vice president of the Northgate Park Neighborhood Association on Monday afternoon as she stared at the headless beast ensconced just off the south side of Murray Avenue, where the museum had once been located. "What would be the point of doing something like that?"

Sticking out of the bulbous body was only a thin, rust-colored steel beam -- the dinosaur's neck. Shards of plaster -- the animal's skin -- lay on the ground, along the over-grown area that had been closed in 1996 following damage from Hurricane Fran. The wire fence that enclosed the old trail had been pushed down and tire tracks were visible in the muddy grass.

"What are they going to do with the head?" sadly asked Rizzo, who Monday afternoon had informed the police about the decapitation. "Put it up on the wall of their bedroom and impress their girlfriends? "

The museum's chief executive officer, Barry Van Deman, felt similarly. "We're saddened by what happened," Van Deman said. The dinosaur had been the centerpiece of the trail since 1967, when the path opened. After the trail was closed, undergrowth and debris accumulated, and neighbors -- who have been working with the museum to clean up the trail -- believe that some homeless people had been living in the woods, perhaps sheltered by the brontosaurus. There will be, though, no cleaning up of the old dinosaur.

While Rizzo floated the idea of a neighborhood fundraiser to help repair the brontosaurus, a new dinosaur trail is set to open this summer and Taneka Bennett, marketing director at the museum, acknowledged that there would be no point in trying to repair the old boy. And the museum, she said, is aware it also cannot replace the history and emotional connection the community has to the old dinosaur trail.

Instead, the museum is encouraging people to post their images of the Old Dinosaur Trail at http://www.flickr.com/groups/847625@N22/ And Mike Shiflett, a member of the Northgate Park Neighborhood Association, has offered a $100 reward for information leading to the arrest of the vandals who were the prehistoric head-hunters.
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