We’re in NYC for Kristin’s birthday trip, and today we went to the Museum of Natural History next to Central Park. We’ve been here before but not for many years, so we were looking forward to the visit.
The museum was enormously popular – we had to join a long line to get in – and once inside we legged it to the Hall of Minerals so we could enjoy it before the screaming throngs arrived. Our plan worked, and we had the gallery almost entirely to ourselves.
There were gems and precious stones and amazing mineral specimens everywhere! Some of the largest and most spectacular examples ever known are there to see, and it was incredible just seeing the variety and abundance of beautiful stones on display (like the tourmalines above), including the famous ‘Star of India’:
They had gems and minerals in both raw and cut versions, and many displays on every aspect of minerology (I liked the science of how gems interact with light). If you like rocks – especially pretty ones – be sure to visit one day 🙂
With the minerals and gems done – and after a break for a (grossly overpriced) lunch – it was time to admire the museum’s famous animal dioramas.
There are dozens of these in various sections throughout the museum, featuring mammals and birds and sea life and even humans. They consist of lifelike taxidermy set in a foreground designed to replicate real life, backed with a painted background. They are eerily realistic, and I can see now why a popular movie was made with that as the plot!
We watched a video about how these are made, and I was surprised to find that almost everything is fake. All the grass and leaves and flowers and snow is fake, and yet it looks incredibly real. I loved these exhibits and if I lived in the city I’d see myself visiting regularly just to sit on the benches and admire them.
A gallery about Earth featured lots of volcano facts and one of the oldest rocks known (over 4 billion years) and hidden away in the back we found a seismograph connected to a pressure plate. Of course I had to try and generate a good signal….
I’m sure you’ll agree the slight injury to my upper sartorius muscle and the subsequent agony I experienced every step during the one-hour trek back to the hotel was absolutely worth it for the satisfaction of knowing I moved the seismograph needle a few millimetres.
And then the dinosaurs! The fourth floor of the museum is essentially dedicated to dinosaurs, and there’s hundreds of skeletons and fossils on display. It’s beautiful and fascinating and undoubtedly the reason the museum draws such large crowds.
A great many of these are real skeletons (as opposed to casts, which are common in other museums) and the museum has owned some for over 100 years. They’ve got one of the biggest known skeletons on display (a titanosaur) and many tiny ones as well. From dinosaurs to prehistoric sea life to early mammals (including prehistoric kangaroos) there’s an incredible variety on display.
Apparently only 15 T-Rex skeletons have been found, and some of those are only bits and pieces. Naturally the museum has the best one on display, it’s the showcase of the entire exhibit (and maybe the entire museum?), and it’s swarmed by people trying to take photos just like mine above.
It is an extremely impressive sight, but not too far away they have an arguably more impressive item: a cast of what is believed to be the most famous fossil in the world, the ‘Berlin specimen’ of archaeopteryx, which paved the way to our current understanding that perhaps dinosaurs didn’t truly die out, they just evolved into birds:
It’s impossible to walk these halls and not wonder what these creatures were like. How they looked, walked or swam? What they sounded like, how they behaved and what they ate? Why did they have spines and plates and sails, or long long necks or tiny feet? How did they live, and how did they die? The displays frequently remind the visitor that very little is known about dinosaurs, and even theories (which constantly evolve) can never be tested.
One of the most thought-provoking comments I read today is that there are a many questions we all have about dinosaurs that we don’t know the answers for when applied to animals still alive today. Dinosaurs therefore will always be beyond our understanding: monsters and myths, surviving only as fossils. We can only ever guess and wonder at their reality.
It was a full day at the museum, and this doesn’t include everything we saw. If you’re ever in NYC put this place on your list; I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
