Dinosaur jumper - 23rd December 2022

Christmas is a very busy and happy time for London. The Natural History Museum is celebrating Christmas too. They are dressing their T-Rex in a giant Christmas jumper.

The giant jumper is made from recycled materials and has dinosaurs on it. The jumper has zips, so helpers can put it on easily. The T-rex is also wearing a Santa hat too. He looks like the design on his jumper.

Sam Barnes tells us why the jumper is important.

Sam Barnes: "It is a big British thing. There is a national Christmas jumper day that happens in December, which is a charity day, so yeah I think it is a uniquely British thing. And for us, it's something we want to kind of take advantage of and we do think our stance is a bit different having a little Christmas dino on your jumper this year."

The T-Rex's dinosaur jumper also comes in human sizes. The museum shop sells jumpers with matching socks, scarves and hats. They are fun, but also serious. The shop makes money for the museum.

Sam Barnes: "For us, everything we do here in the shop, all of our profits go back to supporting all of the vital scientific research and looking after all the collections here in the museum. So for us, Christmas is a really peak time for that and we have lots of visitors coming in and we want to make sure we're giving them something fun and something interesting and also it's an upcycled and recycled yarn product as well."

The Natural History Museum is famous around the world for studying plants and animals. They publish 700 science papers a year. The money from the jumper sales supports the museum's research.

T-Rex looks lovely in its dinosaur jumper. Next year, there'll be a different design. There are a lot of other animals to choose from.