Some Natural History...

Yesterday afternoon we went to The Natural History Museum and it was AMAZING!

Ever since Jurassic Park was on the other week I've been dying to go to the museum and see the Dinosaur bones and fossils, so yesterday took the subway up to 81st Street.

As soon as you get off the train in the station you're prepped for the weird and wonderful creatures you're going to see in the museum. There are mosaic spiders and fish and other creepy crawlies on the walls and the floors tiles have got some fantastic tribal type drawings of people, fish and animals on them. I love how certain subway stations are decorated to suit the area they're in - like 59th St. station has penguins and other animals on the walls because of Central Park Zoo, 8th Avenue has lots of little bronze sculptures, Prince Street has the little tiles with different New York people on them, 42nd Street has pictures of baseball fans because that's where you get the trains to the games from... it's such a great little touch to some of these stations.

As you enter the main entrance of the museum you're greeted by two huge Dinosaur skeletons - it's just like in the films. There are so many halls and rooms and floors to the museum, there are dinosaurs, African Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Space stuff, Ocean stuff, Anthropology stuff and lots more - more than we had time to see in the couple of hours we were there...

The first room we went into was the African Mammals room - you walk into a gloomy hall that has a heard of Elephants in the middle, then all around the sides are individual sets with various animals and scenes in. It was so strange seeing all these models and stuffed animals that I'd been lucky enough to see in the wild in Swaziland, like giraffes, zebras, warthogs, all sorts of antilopes, lions and rhinos.

All the scenes were so cleverly put together - the background paintings merged perfectly with the models and some of them looked incredibly real. Most of the models are made of clay with animal skins on, but some of them are actual stuffed animals, all of them look very life-like.

Then we went up to the forth floor to look at... DINOSAURS!

The range of skeletons they have in the museum is amazing - and the T-Rex is fantastic. It was just so incredible to think that these were REAL and actually roamed the planet! Some of them looked like they were straight out of Avatar!

There was even a Mammoth skeleton!

After seeing the Dinosaurs, and then going back into the African Mammals room it made us see all the animals in a different way - things like Rhinos and Giraffes and Ostrich's aren't too far removed from the Dinosaurs really...

As well as all the weird and wonderful creatures from the world, there were also a lot of rooms dedicated to all the people of the world, there was an exhibit about American Plain Indians which was really interesting. It's strange to think that American Indians were living in places like Arkansas waaaaay before anyone else got there.

There was also a room all about different tribes from around the world - with all their tribal masks and paintings and weapons, there was even an Easter Island Man statue (although I don't think it was real...)

There was still LOADS that we didn't get to see or read about, so we're going to go back another time. There was a full sized scale model of a Blue Whale that we wanted to see and there's also a whole wing dedicated to the planets - so I think we'll be heading straight to that section next time. It really was an amazing museum.