Berlin before Brachiosaurus, 1930

In 1937, the specimen of the giant sauropod Brachiosaurus brancai that Werner Janensch et al. dug up in the Tendaguru beds of Tanzania (or »Tanganyika« as contemporaries would have dubbed it) was mounted in the central hall, the Lichthof, of the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde.

Before that time, the hall was mainly taken up with whales. None of these are on display today, but before the advent of Brachiosaurus and his ilk the Museum für Naturkunde was more occupied with living nature than with extinct animals. In this photograph, the Lichthof is still dominated by the massive remains of four whales in the middle: two grey whales, one sperm whale and a reconstructed tail end. To the left is Dicraeosaurus hansemanni, like Brachiosaurus harvested from Tendaguru; to the right is Diplodocus carnegii, donated to the museum by Andrew Carnegie in 1908 and at the time its only dinosaur.

In 1937 all that would change, and the hall took on the shape that is essentially unaltered until today, dominated by Brachiosaurus, the largest mounted specimen of a dinosaur in the world (as a proud plaque at its foot will tell you). These pictures show the work in progress, and the eventual result. That image did not really change until late 2008, when a new display of the three large dinosaurs in the Lichthof was opened. However, it remains centered around Brachiosaurus.