American Museum of Natural History

 We live on Long Island, just a short commute into New York City and all the cultural riches it offers.

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the most famous museums in the world. And not just because of the movie Night at the Museum.

And we visited the museum last week.

When you visit the museum you will get lessons on astronomy, anthropology, archeology, zoology, paleontology, biology, ecology … and because all of the halls and some of the exhibits bear the names of donors, you’ll learn about philanthropy as well.

And if you doubt the veracity of Darwin’s theory of evolution…the museum will either turn you into a believer or make your head explode.

This is a meteor. It crashed into Earth thousands of years ago.

  

Paleontology time.

  

These guys look scary.

Pacific Islands

And this guy looks familiar

I learned a lot about the Native Americans who lived on the plains and the eastern woodlands.

  

The animal displays always make me sad, I’d rather see live animals in the zoo.

There was a little surprise, though.  In one of the exhibits we found living animals … tiny poisonous frogs.  We’d seen the same frogs in the Costa Rican rainforest last year.

The elephants are in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda.  It’s a nice place to sit if you need to take a break (and you will need to take a break).

  

Welcome to Asia.  This was a display of Jewish artifacts.

I had to educate someone, that huge silver thing is a covering for the Torah scroll.  

  

More from Asia. 

By the time we reached Mexico, Central and South America I was losing steam … 

  

But I had to see the Mayan pyramid.  It reminded me of our visits to Alton Ha, San Gervasio and Chichén Itza.

We saw a lot … but there was so much more to see.  It’s simply impossible to see the whole museum in a single day.  We will have to go back.