
We have taken several trips into New York City on this visit with my daughter and her family but now my granddaughter is six we have to take into consideration what will interest her. So on one of these we set out to the American Museum of Natural History.
The beautiful stone building, which sits on the edge of Central Park, sprawls over several city blocks and is a popular tourist destination as well as a favourite with the locals.
The beautiful stone building, which sits on the edge of Central Park, sprawls over several city blocks and is a popular tourist destination as well as a favourite with the locals.
For 125 years, the American Museum of Natural History has been one of the world's preeminent science and research institutions, renowned for its collections and exhibitions that illuminate millions of years of the earth's evolution, from the birth of the planet through the present day.
It is a huge museum, with four floors of 42 permanent exhibits and usually several special exhibits at any one time and one cannot hope to cover it all in one visit. Fortunately we have been several times already and in fact I think we have covered most of it on one occasion or another. As with some other museums in New York City it has a suggested donation entry fee, in this case $19, but since my son-in-law's company is a corporate sponsor he is able to get free entry for up to eight people at a time so we only had to pay the incredibly expensive parking fee for the car. Did you know that some parking garages advertise $22 for the first 30 minutes in NYC?

This is part of a dinosaur trackway from the Paluxy River, in Texas. There are many different types of dinosaur tracks here and since it is fossilized it is not known if they were there at the same time.
A Mammoth and another early relative of elephants which lived in North America, proboscideans - mammals with enlarged upper teeth called tusks. The only two surviving proboscideans are the Indian and African elephant but there were many more of them in former times, on all continents except Australia and Antarctica.
The other area we visited was the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, best known for its fine dioramas, which is the way animals were displayed in museums in former times. They seem quite old fashioned to our eyes today. This two-levelled area of the museum was conceived and executed by Carl Akeley, a skilled naturalist and taxidermist during the 1920s. This new approach to exhibition showed life sized animals in their carefully reproduced native habitat and with a painted scenic background. It was finally opened in 1936 so these are more than seventy years old.

All the dioramas are behind glass so it is not easy to take a photo without glare of some kind.
These dioramas are studied today as part of the history and evolution of museums. I can imagine how really revolutionary they were in their day and the amount of research and effort which went into their construction is truly remarkable.
This is but a glimpse of a very fascinating museum which I think anyone would find of great interest were they to come to New York, but I think it warrants more than one visit and requires rather a lot of stamina to cover its vast space.
Whenever I see the skeleton above in the museum it brings to mind that scene in the 1938 movie Bringing up Baby, where Katharine Hepburn climbs up the ladder to talk to Cary Grant, who has so labouriously built the dinosaur skeleton and she brings it all tumbling down.

First T. rex ever put on public display and reassembled in 1992 into a more realistic pose
First T. rex ever put on public display and reassembled in 1992 into a more realistic pose
The area the youngest member of our party chose for us to visit on this occasion was that which covered the invertebrates from dinosaurs to advanced mammals. Naturally we started in the dinosaur section, which is always a favourite with most children. This museum has a fine collection of genuine dinosaur skeletons, including the Tyrannus rex above, and of which only 15 partial specimens have ever been found. They also have the first T. rex skull ever collected. As an aside it seems that all the categories of dinosaurs have been changed since my children were obsessed with these animals. All very confusing.
A Mammoth and another early relative of elephants which lived in North America, proboscideans - mammals with enlarged upper teeth called tusks. The only two surviving proboscideans are the Indian and African elephant but there were many more of them in former times, on all continents except Australia and Antarctica.
The other area we visited was the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, best known for its fine dioramas, which is the way animals were displayed in museums in former times. They seem quite old fashioned to our eyes today. This two-levelled area of the museum was conceived and executed by Carl Akeley, a skilled naturalist and taxidermist during the 1920s. This new approach to exhibition showed life sized animals in their carefully reproduced native habitat and with a painted scenic background. It was finally opened in 1936 so these are more than seventy years old.
All the dioramas are behind glass so it is not easy to take a photo without glare of some kind.
This is but a glimpse of a very fascinating museum which I think anyone would find of great interest were they to come to New York, but I think it warrants more than one visit and requires rather a lot of stamina to cover its vast space.