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All the United States Washington, D.C. Uncle Beazley the Triceratops

Uncle Beazley the Triceratops

A celebrity from the late Cretaceous period.

Washington, D.C.

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brazellrobert
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Uncle Beazley   Sarah Stierch/Public Domain
The National Mall   Carol M. Highsmith/Public Domain
At the opening of the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in 1967   Smithsonian Institution Archives/Public Domain
S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution with children enjoying Uncle Beazley   Smithsonian Institution Archives/Public Domain
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At the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, Sinclair Oil unveiled nine life-sized dinosaurs sculptures. Louis Paul Jonas, a taxidermist and wildlife sculptor, had consulted with paleontologists from prominent natural history museums to build the fiberglass statues. Among them was Uncle Beazley, the triceratops who hatched from a chicken’s egg.

Uncle Beazley is a character from The Enormous Egg, a children’s book about a boy who finds a dinosaur in a hen’s egg. In the book, the farm boy named Nate took care of him until he grew too big. In reality, after the World’s Fair, Uncle Beazley and the other statues toured the country on a flatbed truck in Sinclair’s Dinoland display, and in 1967, the company donated them to museums around the U.S.

Uncle Beazley went to the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum for its opening on September 15, 1967 and was filmed for the Enormous Egg movie in 1968. Jonas made five more statues of varying heights to portray the dinosaur as he grew.

From the 1970s to 1994, he spent his days in front of the National Museum of Natural History, and since 1994 Uncle Beazley has been on display at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., save for a month in 2011 spent getting refurbished at the Smithsonian. Countless children enjoyed playing on the fiberglass sculpture for years, but it’s no longer allowed.

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Dinosaurs Museums Children's Literature Animals

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Added By

brazellrobert

Edited By

Edward Denny, Michael Inscoe

  • Edward Denny
  • Michael Inscoe

Published

July 31, 2017

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Sources
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Beazley
  • http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/02/16/133806945/uncle-beazley-is-on-the-move
  • https://nationalzoo.si.edu/search/uncle%2Bbeazley
Uncle Beazley the Triceratops
3001 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, District of Columbia
United States
38.931927, -77.05244
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