Washington DC – Smithsonian (Exhibit 1)

The Smithsonian museum in Washington DC boasts one of the most amazing dinosaur collections in the world.  Aside from an unbelievable display of a full sized Tyrannosaurus eating a Triceratops, they have two awesome Stegosaurus skeletons.  This is the first, and is one of the oldest mounts ever put together for public viewing.  It was first shown in 1918, which seems like a long time ago until you remember that the specimens its composed of lived almost 150 million years ago.  Compared to that, 103 years is basically the blink of an eye!

For my entire childhood, this Stegosaurus display stood alone, but with a new redesign over these past few years, they now have it fighting a Ceratosaurs, one of the nastier predators of that time.  In this recent setup, Stegosaurus has used its “thagomizer” (tail spikes) to knock down and presumably kill his attacker.  Hooray!  Good for him!