Stan the Dinosaur: The T-Rex Skeleton at Google's HQ
Google's love affair with the T-Rex isn't limited to pixels. At the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, a full-size T-Rex skeleton has watched over employees for years. Googlers call it Stan.
Who is Stan?
Stan at Google is a replica cast of one of the most famous Tyrannosaurus rex fossils ever found — the original "Stan" (catalog number BHI 3033), unearthed in South Dakota's Hell Creek Formation and named after Stan Sacrison, the amateur paleontologist who first spotted it in 1987. The real Stan is among the most complete T-Rex skeletons known, and casts of it stand in museums worldwide — and in one tech campus courtyard.
Why a dinosaur at a tech company?
Company lore says the skeleton reminds employees not to let Google go extinct — a memento mori with teeth. Googlers lean into the joke: Stan is routinely decorated, most famously with a flock of pink plastic flamingos crawling over the bones, and has worn holiday outfits over the years.
Stan and the dinosaur game
There's no official link between the campus skeleton and Chrome's runner, but they rhyme: both are Google turning something dead — an extinct predator, a dead connection — into something playful. The runner's T-Rex was even designed around a similar wink; its story is in the origins of the dinosaur game.
Visit Stan, then outrun him
The Googleplex courtyards have historically been viewable from public paths, though campus access rules change — check before you plan a pilgrimage. The pixel version requires no travel: play the Google dinosaur game right here, meet the game's flying obstacles in Ptero Flyer, or dodge the extinction event itself in Meteor Dodge. For more real-dino trivia, see the 500-teeth dinosaur.