For decades, visitors flocked to Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s original Dinosaur Hall to see its resident VIPs—Diplodocus carnegii, Apatosaurus louisae, and Tyrannosaurus rex. They left with a dark and foreboding image baked into their brains, painted in 1950 by the museum’s chief artist, Ottmar von Fuehrer. The floor-to-ceiling mural took the Carnegie Tech-trained artist months to complete, and museum visitors got to watch as the depiction of the fierce creature took shape. Part T. rex, part Godzilla, the lumbering dinosaur was based on the science of the day. Later that century, scientists learned that T. rex moved with its back held almost horizontal, with its powerful jaws just a few feet above eye level and its tail raised well off the ground. So, von Fuehrer’s mural had to go. But his work is still on view today—from the painting of Mt. Rainier in the Hall of Botany to the murals in the Hall of North American Wildlife’s dioramas.
Dinosaur Hall’s T. rex Mural
For decades, visitors flocked to Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s original Dinosaur Hall to see its resident VIPs—Diplodocus carnegii, Apatosaurus louisae, and Tyrannosaurus rex. They left with a dark and
