National Museum of Natural History

The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2016, with 7.1 million visitors, it was the eleventh most visited museum in the world and the most visited natural history museum in the world.[2] Opened in 1910, the museum on the National Mall was one of the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to hold the national collections and research facilities.[3] The main building has an overall area of 1.5 million square feet (140,000 m2) with 325,000 square feet (30,200 m2) of exhibition and public space and houses over 1,000 employees.

The museum's collections contain over 145 million specimens[4] of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, the largest natural history collection in the world.[5] It is also home to about 185 professional natural history scientists—the largest group of scientists dedicated to the study of natural and cultural history in the world.

Research and collections

The Smithsonian gives an approximate number for artifacts and specimens of 146 million.[42] More specifically, the collections include 30 million insects, 4.5 million plants preserved in the Museum's herbarium, and 7 million fish stored in liquid-filled jars.[43] The National Collection of Amphibians and Reptiles has more than tripled from 190,000 specimen records 1970 to over 580,000 specimen records in 2020.[44][45] Of the 2 million cultural artifacts, 400,000 are photographs housed in the National Anthropological Archives.[43] Through off-site active loan and exchange programs, the museum's collections can be accessed.[46] As a result, 3.5 million specimens are out on loan every year.[43] The rest of the collections not on display are stored in the non-public research areas of the museum and at the Museum Support Center, located in Suitland, MD.[47] Other facilities include a marine science center in Ft. Pierce, Florida and field stations in Belize, Alaska, and Kenya.

Research in the museum is divided into seven departments: anthropology, botany, entomology, invertebrate zoology, mineral sciences, paleobiology, vertebrate zoology.

One collection of nearly a million specimens of birds, reptiles, and mammals kept at the museum has been maintained by the Biological Survey unit of the U.S. Geological Survey. This division had started in 1885 as an economic ornithology unit of the Agriculture Department. Clarence Birdseye and Clinton Hart Merriam had worked in this organization. As of February 2018, the unit's funding is planned to be cut, and it is not clear what would happen to the collection.

Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals

The National Gem and Mineral Collection is one of the most significant collections of its kind in the world. The collection includes some of the most famous pieces of gems and minerals including the Hope Diamond and the Star of Asia Sapphire, one of the largest sapphires in the world. There are currently over 15,000 individual gems in the collection, as well as 350,000 minerals and 300,000 samples of rock and ore specimens.[49] Additionally, the Smithsonian's National Gem and Mineral Collection houses approximately 45,000 meteorite specimens, including examples of every known type of meteorite,[50] and is considered to be one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in the world.

Hall of Human Origins

The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins opened on March 17, 2010, marking the museum's 100th anniversary. The hall is named for David H. Koch, who contributed $15 million to the $20.7 million exhibit.

The Hall is "dedicated to the discovery and understanding of human origins," and occupies 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2) of exhibit space. This exhibit includes 76 humans skulls, each of a different species, eons apart. Each of these species is a human, signified by the "homo" prefix. One species that can be found in this gallery is the Homo heidelbergensis, which lived 200,000-700,000 years ago. In addition, there is a female skull from Homo floresiensis, a human species that possibly only went extinct just 17,000 years ago.[53] The exhibit includes an interactive human family tree that follows six million years of evolution,[54] and a Changing the World gallery that focuses on issues surrounding climate change and humans' impact on the world. The Hall's core concept idea is "What Does It Mean To Be Human", and focuses on milestones of Human Evolution such as Walking Upright, Bigger Brains, and Creating a World of Symbols. Also covered is the Smithsonian's significant research on the geological and climate changes which occurred in East Africa during significant periods of Human Evolution. The exhibit highlights an actual fossil Neanderthal and replicas created by famed paleoartist, John Gurche.[53] The exhibit has been criticized for downplaying the significance of human-caused global warming.

The exhibit also provides a complementary web site, which provides diaries and podcasts directly from related fields of research. The Companion Book, What Does It Mean To Be Human was written by Richard (Rick) Potts, the Curator, and Christopher Sloan. The exhibit was designed by Reich + Petch.

Dinosaurs/Hall of Paleobiology

The Hall of Dinosaurs has fossilized skeletons and cast models, including Tyrannosaurus rex cast facing a Triceratops cast. The Triceratops exhibit shows the first accurate dinosaur skeleton in virtual motion, achieved through the use of scanning and digital technology."[58][59] The collection consists of 46 "complete and important specimens" of dinosaurs.

In May 2012, billionaire David H. Koch donated $35 million toward the cost of a $45 million upgrade to the 30-year-old, 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) dinosaur hall. The hall closed in the spring of 2014 and reopened in 2019.

Dinosaurs/Hall of Paleobiology

The Behring Hall of Mammals was designed by Reich + Petch. The mammal specimens are presented as works of modern art within minimal environmentals. Visitors discover mammal's evolutionary adaptions to hugely diverse contexts, and ultimately discover that they too are mammals.[citation needed]

The museum has the largest collection of vertebrate specimens in the world, nearly twice the size of the next largest mammal collections, including historically important collections from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[68] Its collection was initiated by C. Hart Merriam and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (later the Department of the Interior), which expanded it in the 1890s-1930s.