Highlights from the Museum of Natural History: NYC Trip

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the classic jewels of the New York City museum circuit. Established over a hundred years ago by Teddy Roosevelt---the idea that children are able to learn about nature and the world was paramount for Teddy.

We'd always wanted to go while we lived in Brooklyn, but we never had time. We got pretty close once, but then needed to rest on the specific day we were to go. Oh well.

Upon entering on pretty much any day, you get in a long line in a zoo-like atmosphere, in a grand entrance with a  few allosauruses trying to take down a big brachiosaur:

The lines, two total, one on each side of the great hall, while incredibly long, move at quite a clip, as there are maybe ten banks of "entrant tellers" who collect the now non-mandatory "donation". There had been a lawsuit that the museums lost about their "suggested donations" being mandatory, and about how that becomes an entrance fee instead of a "donation", and that having "entrance fees" changed the nature of the tax exemptions and City subsidies that these establishments enjoy. So now they ask you if you'd like to donate the $44 for two adults that is the suggested donation.

I paid it because the institution of the museum my be my favorite...maybe libraries...my attitude changes from week to week...

So once inside, there are a few important staples, like the blue whale and the [most] famous T-Rex head [in the world].

But, along the walk there are some cool things, like the giant clam shell, complete with a sign that says "No Sitting!" (or something to that effect):

(Corrie almost sits in it)

When you get to the sea life hall, the full size model of the blue whale is more spectacular that you imagine it'll be, stretching off far across the hall's breadth:

There are some of the craziest dioramas I've ever seen inside this room. My photographs don't really do them justice.

One mollusk I couldn't resist putting in: it's called the "fat gaper" and looks, eh...you can't make this up:

Then there are lots of models, life size of course, but made out of plaster or plastic, and they let you know how exotic and crazy life gets on this rock.

One of my favorite sea critters is the living fossil coelacanth. The lobe-fin fish is closer to terapods (walking animals from long ago) than to regular ray-fin fish (every other type of fish besides sharks). I think they're pretty cool:

Then you eventually get to the DINOSAURS! Not sure why I used all-caps, but everyone's inner-child loves dinosaurs.

Here's the main bad-ass, Tyrannosaurus Rex:

And here's deinonychus, a close cousin of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park imaginations, but it seems like today's science agrees that they most likely had a furry coat of feathers:

This is my favorite vegetarian dinosaur, the stegosaurus:

Then you come to, eventually, the ice-age era rooms, with the skeletons of the mega-fauna of the mammalian variety. And here we get super moose:

There's even a primate wing, and I especially like this gibbon skeleton, stretching, I like to imagine, human like to get some top-shelf liquor:

And then my camera's battery died. A very long day having "ended" at nearly four pm, we walked back down to a place for drinks and snacks, before heading to dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in some seventeen years.

Here's one last shot of me: