Dippy the dinosaur has helped boost visitor numbers at his latest stop on a nationwide tour, the Natural History Museum has said.
His sojourn at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) attracted an extra 140,000 visitors to the city centre specially to see the exhibition, and who spent an estimated £4.2 million, according to research for the gallery.
Dippy the Diplodocus, a 26-metre-long dinosaur skeleton cast, was famously on display in Hintze Hall of the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London from 1979 until January 2017.
Dippy is now on a two-year tour of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and five regions across England, with the aim of connecting people with nature and inspiring a new generation of scientists, naturalists and environmentalists.
The popularity of the exhibition in Birmingham saw the BMAG attract more than double the amount of visitors than during the same period last year.
The success in Birmingham follows a trip to Dorset County Museum, where Dippy’s presence tripled the annual visitor numbers for the venue in under three months.
The next stop on the tour is Ulster Museum in Belfast, where he will be from September 28 to January 6.
“One of our biggest priorities at the Natural History Museum is making sure the riches of our national collection benefit communities right across the UK.
“Dippy’s tour is doing just that, and it has been made possible through the vision, ambition and collaboration of many partners – it is a great example of what can be achieved when regional and national institutions work together.”
