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| - Pittsburgh's Museum of Natural History is a world-class museum, no doubt about it! The time and dedication that was put into creating a place to wonder and learn really shows. This place was a centerpiece of my childhood and is a piece of history itself. Back in the day, Andrew Carnegie put a lot of money towards acquiring fossils and dinosaur bones to present to the world. In fact, check this out from their website: "Carnegie's personal presentation of a Diplodocus cast to the British Museum triggered requests for replicas from European presidents, kings and emperors." Pretty cool, huh? I like Pittsburgh's dinosaur exhibit way better than the British Museum's exhibit in London, which I found to be dark and outdated.
You could spend a couple days looking around this place. First visit the newly redesigned Dinosaurs in their Time exhibit. Much more modern and thorough than when I was a kid. The hall is bright and airy, and filled with greenery surrounding the fossils. Most of the fossils are real and there are digital displays beneath each one providing more information and explaining exactly which bones are real and which pieces are casts. At the front of the exhibit is the PaleoLab where you can watch real paleontologists at work behind the glass.
Other exhibits hold a lot of wonder, charm and nostalgia, such as the display of birds that lines a hallway, and the taxidermied yet lifelike animals in the hall of mammals. They also have an impressive insect collection. I also love the early mammals room, which show cross section skeletons of extinct animals like the mammoth, a direwolf, and some early horses among others.
The geology exhibit in the room before the dinosaurs is fascinating too, and gives some geological history of the Western Pennsylvania region. I remember the Eskimo/Inuit exhibit from when I was a kid but I just love how they've updated it, giving new information about language and how their people live today. I could be wrong but I think the Native American exhibit could be fairly new too. And don't miss the small Egyptian exhibit and the minerals exhibit.
On top of all this, the museum is gorgeous on the inside in its main halls-- lots of marble. Just amazing architecture.
I could go on, but I'd rather you go out and discover these treasures for yourself!
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