One of the Triangle's hottest holiday tickets, for the Museum of Life and Science's Santa Train, go on sale Nov. 18 at lifeandscience.org.

Since the late 1970s, the museum's miniature railroad has been seasonally decorated for nighttime trips to Santa Claus's North Pole headquarters, followed by hot chocolate and seasonal music.

This year's schedule is Dec. 4-6, 9-13 and 16-21, departures from 5:20 p.m. to 8:20 p.m. Tickets cost $12 per-person for ages 3 and up. Children under 3 ride free, but must ride in an adult's lap.

Friends of the restored brontosaurus are selling "Save the Bronto" t-shirts Saturday at the Durham Farmers' Market.

"People really love the t-shirt," Save the Bronto spokeswoman Nancy Rizzo told Bull's Eye this morning.

The venerable dinosaur statue has had its head restored, but the group still wants to raise money for more repairs, repainting and fencing, Rizzo said.

The t-shirts, with a stylized dinosaur drawn by Northgate Park artist Sebastien Florand and the words "Save the Bronto/Save Durham's History" went on sale in mid-July. More than 700 shirts have been sold, Rizzo said in an email, and they have gone into a third printing.

"We have sent t-shirts to California and New York and many points in between," Rizzo said.

Plans are to keep the shirts on sale until November, when the group plans a Bronto Birthday Party. Once repainting is done and a fence put up, t-shirt income will go into a "long-term care plan" in case the statue needs tending later on, Rizzo said.

Vandals decapitated the statue, which has stood at the Museum of Life and Science since 1967, on May 31. A groundswell of public distress led residents of Northgate Park and others in the area to combine forces with the museum and have the landmark repaired.

"It is amazing the attachment folks have to the bronto," Rizzo wrote. "I guess it is a reminder of a simpler time in our lives when life was easier and we enjoyed life's simple things."

Dinosaur fans (and isn't that just about everybody?) — the Museum of Life and Science grandly opens its new, state-of-the-art and -science Dinosaur Trail at 9:45 Saturday morning.

Get there by 9:30 and you can hear the ceremonial remarks.

The new trail is up from the Butterfly House, in the museum's main section on the north side of Murray Avenue. Back on the south side, in what used to be the main section's Pre-History Trail, the vandalized brontosaurus has his head back on.

Another reason to celebrate.

See photos of the repair of "Bronto", the vandalized dinosaur at The Museum of Life and Science in Durham. Photos by staff photojournalist John Rottet.

The Museum of Life and Science has hired Greenville sculptor Kenneth “Tripp” Jarvis to re-attach the neck and head and make other repairs to the brontosaurus statue vandalized in late May.
Jarvis has a master of fine art degree from East Carolina University and over 15 years experience forming concrete-over-steel structures.

“In repairing the head and neck, first I’ll need to weld a quarter-inch rod to the beam, surround the neck area with hardware cloth, then stucco, lay fiberglass overtop and finally paint the areas that have been repaired,” Jarvis said in a release. Restitution money from the vandals is paying for the May damage, and community fundraising is needed for additional work on the mouth and body.

Additional work including fencing, painting, further restoration or security and maintenance could bring the total needed, beyond the restitution money, to $10,000.

A museum benefactor stepped forward with an anonymous gift of $1,000. Bronto Software has pledged a $2,000 challenge grant, and  the museum has received over $1,500 from 20 individual donors so far. In addition, the Northgate Park Neighborhood Association Bronto Project Fund has received over $400 in contributions.

The Bronto Project Committee has also secured 14 sponsors to produce a “Save the Bronto” T-shirt. Five hundred shirts will go on sale Saturday at the Durham Farmer's Market and Sunday morning at Elmo's on Ninth Street. For more information go to www.savethebronto.com or e-mail Nancy Rizzo at savethebronto@yahoo.com  

HOW TO HELP
To make a tax-deductible contribution to help repair the brontosaurus, make your check payable to Museum of Life and Science and note “Bronto” on the memo line. Send to Museum of Life and Science, 433 Murray Ave. Durham, NC 27704. To donate online, go to www.lifeandscience.org and go to “Donate and Support – Special Projects”. To make a gift with VISA or MasterCard, call the Museum at 220-5429. All donors to the Museum will receive a receipt for tax deduction. Bronto funds not used immediately will be used for additional work including fencing, improvements to the model like painting and maintenance.

To learn more about the Bronto Software challenge grant, visit http://brontonation.com/ and read “For a Bronto in Need”. Two Facebook groups -– Save Durham’s Brontosaurus and Brontosaurus Durhamite -– have also been created.

Visitors explore the Museum of Life and Science's new Dinosaur Trail in Durham. The trail opens to the public on July 25.

Call it "The Land That Time Forgot" syndrome.

The 1975 movie, based on a 1918 Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Tarzan guy) book, puts a group of British sailors on a remote island where dinosaurs still roam. I must have been 14 when I saw it.

So when my friend Liam took me hiking along Ellerbe Creek and we came upon the hulking bontosaurus in the weeds years ago, I couldn’t help but travel a little bit back in time myself.

I think it’s that way with a lot of folks. That’s why so many got so angry at the unnamed vandals who sawed off the dinosaur’s head last month.

And that's why the museum is just as strongly protecting the identities of the kids who did it.

“The Museum has received both strong positive feedback and questions from our community regarding our choice to use mediation rather than pressing charges or litigation,” vice president Julie Ketner Rigby said in a statement.

The museum decision has irked some Durham residents. John Sideris donated money to help repair the statue and added a note criticizing the museum for not being more transparent. That and other comments on the Duke Park listserv made me call Rigby yesterday.

“Not everybody’s happy with the situation,” she conceded.

But the museum --  which started as a children's museum, remember -- is concerned about the safety of the vandals. Some people were so angry they made threats, with at least one person saying somewhere that those responsible should be shot.

“This is not a situation that we’re used to dealing with,” Rigby told me last night. “We’re prepared for a lot of things, but this is not one of them.”

Sideris spoke with Rigby too and said he came away less upset.

“From my perspective the point of consequences is to improve behavior not to mete out vengeance, as much as that might be what we really want.” he wrote. “Jail or criminal charges may not be the best consequence if the desire is to improve behavior.”

Still, the museum receives tax dollars and is asking the public for money to make repairs. Doesn’t it owe the public more details on how those responsible will pay for their “heinous” act, to use the word of neighborhood leader Mike Shiflett?

Rigby said she would talk with the museum President and CEO Barry Van Deman today and get back to us if she can provide any more information.

UPDATE: Rigby called back this afternoon (Wednesday). She said the museum won't say how many kids were involved, how much they paid in restitution or give details of their community service.

It's official: Durham's decapitated dinosaur will get its head back.

The dino's owner, the Museum of Life and Science, made that official this afternoon.

There's just one thing — 

The Bronto Project to restore the vandalized brontosaurus at the Museum of Life and Science has a pledge of support — $2,000 from Bronto.com, a Durham software firm.

Meantime, the museum is looking into how much repairing the 42-year-old statue by Ellerbe Creek is going to cost — at least, for the initial step of reattaching the head and neck cut off in a nighttime attack May 31.

"We are working in concert with one another," said Nancy Rizzo, one of Project Bronto's organizers.

The project's steering committee is meeting Thursday to plan money-raising. A meeting last week to assess interest drew about 35 people, Rizzo said."The people that were there were really motivated," she said.

The old dinosaur that lost its head this week received a great outpouring of sympathy from all around the town. Next Thursday, good Bull Citizens have the chance to put their bodies where their sentiments are — to the extent, at least, of attending a meeting.

All interested parties are invited to a meeting on the dinosaur's future at 7 p.m., in the Friendly City Civitan Clubhouse, 2510 Glendale Ave. The meeting is sponsored by the Northgate Park Neighborhood Association.

Museum of Life and Science spokeswoman Taneka Bennett told Bulls Eye today that the stolen head has been taken to a safe and secure location pending a decision what to do next.

Restoration, she said, is "certainly" an option on the table.