A Life-Sized Dinosaur Still Roams The Planet On This Scenic North Carolina Trail

There you are, strolling through Northgate Park in Durham, North Carolina, and suddenly you spot a dinosaur — a brontosaurus, to be exact — partially hidden in the forest. The thing is life-size, measuring more than 70 feet in length, and its pebbled skin looks practically real. If you didn't know about "Bronto" already, you might be surprised to find a Jurassic specimen seeming to forage for leaves on the Ellerbee Creek Trail, some 3 miles north of downtown Durham.

North Carolina is heavily quilted with beautiful outdoor spaces, and Northgate Park is just one of the many places to stretch your legs and take in the scenery. But this lone, prehistoric herbivore looks wildly out of place in a suburban park just a short distance from Duke University's campus. Today, Northgate is best known for its trails, playground facilities, and picnic areas, including reservable grills and tables. You'll also find the Magic Wings Butterfly House and Edison Johnson Aquatic Center, which stand almost next to each other. Yet amateur paleontologists will zoom in on the structure in the middle: the Museum of Life and Science.

The museum is a family-friendly facility, and exhibits cover aerospace, regional wildlife, and lepidoptery (the adjacent Butterfly House is part of the museum), plus a myriad of other scientific topics. There's also a Dinosaur Trail just outside, with a wide range of paleontological sculptures, including an Albertosaurus and a Maiasaura. But wait, why isn't Bronto among them? People love dinosaur sculptures, of course, from roadside attractions to Disney theme parks, so why is Bronto not with his other dinosaur friends?

Bronto has endured a great deal of misfortune since he was first placed here in 1967. The original Dinosaur Trail was located here, and Bronto was sculpted by the museum's exhibit curator Richard Westcott, who laboriously based its anatomy on all the dinosaur research he could find. The trail's popularity waxed and waned over the next couple of decades, until the devastating Hurricane Fran swept through in 1996, which hit the southeastern U.S. particularly hard and resulted in 14 deaths in North Carolina alone. Bronto survived the storm, but when the museum proposed a new Dinosaur Trail in the early 2000s, Bronto wasn't invited to join the updated sculptures.

The weirdest twist came in 2009, when vandals sliced off Bronto's head and carried it away. The trophy was eventually recovered and reattached, and a chainlink fence now surrounds the long-suffering monument. From this episode alone, you could easily add Bronto to a list of the most bizarre tourist attractions in America. Neither storm nor human mischief has afflicted Bronto since then, and the dinosaur has a lot of advocates in the area. As if to make up for all this tragedy, the Ellerbee Creek Trail is also known as "Wescott's Bronto Trail," with an official sign and everything. Let's just keep an eye for meteors.