Dinos on the Move

For years, the Natural History Museum (NHM) of L.A. County’s famous “Dueling Dinosaurs” duked it out in a large round planter box athwart the broad pathway from Exposition Boulevard to the north entrance to the museum. It was a seemingly prominent position. But if you happened to drive by, you’d probably only see them after you’d already passed them—and there is no fast, easy route to drive back for a second look. The reconfiguration of the North Campus—including the demolition of the old entry plaza—provided an opportunity to reposition the beasts at the Museum’s most prominent corner, adjacent to the new Metro stop, new parking structure and new pedestrian entrance to the North Campus garden.

Delegated to Plas-Tal, a structural steel fabricator/erector, the task of moving the statues might have seemed relatively straightforward, if a bit heavy. But could anyone seriously have expected an angry T. rex and furious Triceratops to go easily?

It turns out that the two statues are actually attached to each other: T. rex’s left foot is atop Triceratops’s rear right. Their feet are attached to anchor plates, which in turn were attached via bolts to the original supports.

The Plas-Tal crew created a steel frame to hold the statues safely.

Once the plates were exposed and with the dinos supported by the frame, the steelworkers cut through the bolts.

The dinos were then moved by crane (a sight you don’t see every day) to their new location…

… and set atop the plain concrete pillars that would serve as the foundation of their new supporting structure.

So what would the new structure look like? To be continued…