A visit to the American Museum of Natural History

This past Sunday, my brother and I took a trip to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Wow, what a fantastic place. I have been there before, but not since 1994, when I was 10 years old. It's funny, but I remembered a lot from that trip...but it was so much more than I remembered. I am sure now that I didn't see anywhere near the entire museum in 1994, because I only scratched the surface this time! I'm also much more of a historian/antiquarian now then I was then...I suspect I appreciated it more now...although the first time was right after Jurassic Park came out.

I ended up taking over 1500 photos on the day, my second most ever...and if I wasn't literally falling asleep I would likely have set me new record for most in a day, as I fell about 240 short. (To get to the museum, I stayed awake for roughly 27 hours...I sat down to watch a little movie in the museum and fell asleep...we didn't even TRY the Planetarium because that made us all fall asleep back in 1994 when we were wide awake!) There's no way I'm going to post all 1500 pictures, so please take a look through them on my website HERE. If you like history, dinosaurs, megafauna, and drives through NYC, you'll enjoy.

I estimate that it is going to take at least 5 trips to see everything...and we plan to do just that. Luckily, it's only an hour and a half away from home, so frequent visits are likely.

This Wooly Mammoth skeleton is actually what I remembered the most from the museum...or tied for the most. Man, I wish these were still alive. They are basically just hairy elephants, but they were so cool.

This Mastodon was found in Newburgh, NY! That's literally right across the Hudson River from me...I go there all the time. I even wore a Town of Newburgh Model Car Club shirt to the museum yesterday. (Wish I had thought to get that pictured with the Mastodon!) And it was only found there in 1908...that's not that long ago, especially when you are dealing with eons, as this museum does.

One of the biggest draws in the museum is the dinosaur room(s), with the Tyrannosaurus Rex being the main draw...this is said to be the most complete skeleton on display in the world. It's the real thing as well, unlike some, which are just casts of the original.

While I wish that a lot of the extinct animals were still alive, including some of the dinosaurs...yeah, not here.  I kind of like having humans being the top of the food chain, thank you...and 6 Jurassic Park movies have shown why it's not a good idea for them to share the earth with us.

There's no way to get this one's entire tail in one photo with the rest of it. It's an Allosaurus.

 They have a giant extinct turtle hanging from the ceiling in one of the rooms

 I realize I chose the wrong picture to upload- I wanted the one showing the full body. You can't tell me that this isn't what the Chitauri were based on in the Avengers movie.

 This is a Moonfish that lived 40 million years ago.

 They have magnifying glasses set up in some cases to show detail. Photographing through them worked pretty well, especially as I'm shooting through two layers of glass here.

 This giant, scary looking fish ate....plankton.

 They had a special T. rex exhibit, which was awesome. This is not one of them but a relative.

 They had a second one in there. This is also a real skeleton. The shadow moved and told a story, which was great.

 This is what they think baby T. rex looked like....reminded me of half lemur, half chicken.

 And what they think the adult looked like...no one is going to make fun of his combover.

 Note the floor of this exhibit- it's made up of 120 thousand shark teeth! (Sharks can grow up to 20,000 teeth in their lifetime...that's a lot of shark teeth in the world.

 They freely admit that they have no clue what this was.

 This is a model of what they think lived 40 million years aog.

 Pterodactyl.

 Did you know that tiny camels used to live in what is now the USA? I had no idea.

 This is a model of what they think they looked like

 Bison (note the model)

 The largest deer that ever lived

 The giant sloth- I remembered this from being a kid.

 This is my brother's favorite...it's really cool

 They have a turret that you can look out over Central Park and see some of the Manhattan skyline. This turret was not open in 1994 when I was there.

 There's another dinosaur room that we barely touched, but I saw the Triceratops from the hallway and had to go see it...one of my favorite dinosaurs.

 This suit of shells is from the African exhibit, which I basically just cut through because I was getting to my exhaustion point. Had to photograph this though.

 Some meteorites in the gift shop. The big giant one is $2800. I chose the three pack that is barely visible in the bottom left of the photo for a much more reasonable $40...

 You could also buy some fish fossils but I didn't ask about the price.

 Some models of fish on the wall.

 This life size model of a blue whale is the other part of the museum I remembered the best. It's hard to fathom there are living creatures this size out there on our planet...this is amazingly huge, note the people at the railing on the other side...those are full grown adults.

 I had some dinosaur nuggets in the cafeteria.

 The main lobby is iconic. It features a diorama of a mother Barosaurus protecting her baby from what the label calls an Allosaurus, but looks like a Velociraptor, and I though that Allosaurus was that big neck dino from the other room.

 The walls are covered in murals giving, I think, the history of humanity.

 And carvings...

Teddy Roosevelt statue out the front. (we went in the entrance by the parking garage, and left out the main entrance)

 150th Anniversary banner over the main entry. My brother pointed out today that I was there for the 125th and the 150s Anniversaries...I sure as heck will NOT be waiting for the 175th to go back! In fact, I want to go back now...even though it's closed and I'm physically exhausted. I loved this place a lot.

 A Christmas dinosaur topiary! And yes, it's lit up, although in the sun so hard to see.

 After we left, we drove through Central Park...

 through Manhattan...

 to the East Side, and the Harlem River, shown here. We then turned left and went up FDR drive and ended up UNDER the elevated train!

Didn't really care for that too much, especially because at one point little rocks and debris was falling down on the roof of my brother's car.

 Yankee Stadium

 I'm pretty sure this is Yonkers. I had never really been there before, although I suspect some of the highways we take go through it's outskirks. We probably won't do that ride again, and will stick with the Henry Hudson Highway.

This here is Tarrytown, and was the last photo I took before I fell asleep...in fact, I already had the seat reclined by this point!

Naturally, the museum did not have any trading cards...but I did manage to pick up some post cards.

 The two Christmas cards are both dated to 2019, which is unusual in post cards. Not in years, but they bear the 150th Anniversary logo, which is 2019.

 The fountain is on the roof of the parking garage! I didn't know that until I scanned the card on Monday.

 The Lenticular card is probably my favorite, it changes between the whale and the front of the museum!

The rest of the cards show scenes of inside the museum and some New York scenery.

I actually did something pretty rare...I spent some money on myself. A three pack of meteorites, which I've always had an interest in...their gift shop is probably the nicest of any of the museums we've been to this year. They range from the poor (not having a gift shop) to the amazing, which is this one that was so big it was on two floors! What disappointed me though was that the shirts only go up to 2x. Not anywhere near large enough for me. I really wanted to get a shirt to wear.

I leave you with one final picture, which may be the most simple, yet evocative, that I took...