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NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM-LONDON-UK

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM -LONDON-UK

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

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The Natural History Museum in London exhibits specimens from various segments of natural history. The museum has around 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology, and zoology. This is an amazing place to visit, arousing curiosity in adults as well the kids. This place provides ample of information as well as keep you engaged for several hours. The museum not only displays the collections and conduct exhibitions, it has got lot research and studies going on and discoveries being made. Many scientists and students work and study here.

Opening Times: Open daily 10.00-17.50 (last entry 17.30). MORE DETAILS

ADDRESS

Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, Location

NEAREST TUBE STATIONS

The nearest Tube station is South Kensington, about a five-minute walk from the Museum’s main entrance on Cromwell Road. Piccadilly, District and Circle line trains stop at South Kensington. This station is not step-free.

Gloucester Road station is about a 12-minute walk from the main entrance on Cromwell Road. It services the Piccadilly, District and Circle lines. This station has a lift but is not step-free.

Entrances:

1.Cromwell Road main entrance: is open and is accessible via the gates at the front of the Museum. It has step-free access with a ramp.

2.Exhibition Road: This entrance is open but not step free. There is a lift from the entrance lobby to the galleries.

FACILITIES

  • Picnic space

If you would prefer to bring your own food, you can use the Picnic Area on the lower ground floor in the Green Zone. Please note, during term time the Picnic Area is reserved for school groups on weekdays between 11.00-14.00, after this all of the tables are available for public use.

  • Restaurants and cafes
  • souvenirs shops.
  • Cloakroom
  • Disabled parking- limited space
  • Designated wheelchair accessible public toilet
  • Audible alarm system
  • Information available in audio format
  • Assistance dogs welcome
  • Wheelchairs available free of charge
  • Accessible baby changing rooms
  • Museum map
  • Public toilets

TIPS

HISTORY:

The Museum first opened on 18 April 1881. But it all started in 1753 when the British government bought the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, a doctor and collector and built the British Museum so these items could be displayed to the public. Sloane’s will allow the government to buy his extensive collection of more than 71,000 items for £20,000 – significantly less than its estimated value. Sloane travelled the world as a high society physician, and he collected many natural history specimens and cultural artefacts along the way.

Alfred Waterhouse is the architect of the Natural History Museum. He used Romanesque architecture; the building is considered a work of art and has become one of London’s most iconic landmarks and is even referred as a cathedral to nature. Waterhouse used terracotta as building material as it was more resistant to the harsh climate of Victorian London. The building is decorated with ornaments inspired by natural history. The building’s gallery ceilings are adorned with intricate tiles displaying a vast array of plants from all over the world, with Hintze Hall’s ceiling alone covered with 162 individual panels. We can see a series of animal and plant ornaments, statues, and relief carvings throughout the entire building – with extinct species in the east wing and living species in the west.

Museum has four floors with 4 colour coded zones of galleries. Attenborough Studio and the Darwin centre and Zoology spirit building are in orange zone. Blue Zone has Dinosaur gallery, Fishes, Amphibians & Reptiles gallery, Images of Nature, Mammals gallery, Marine Invertebrates, Mammals (blue whale), and Jerwood Gallery. Birds, Creepy Crawlies, Fossil Marine Reptiles, Giant Sequoia, Minerals, Treasures (Cadogan Gallery), The Vault, Waterhouse Gallery and Investigate Centre are in the green Zone.  The Red zone has Earth’s treasury, From the Beginning, Human Evolution, Lasting Impressions, Restless Surface, Volcanoes & Earthquakes galleries.

THINGS SHOULD NOT MISS:

The blue whale skeleton, Hope

Around82 feet (25 m) long and weighing 4.5 tonnes. This is currently displayed suspended from the ceiling in the Hintze Hall welcoming you.  Blue whales are the largest creatures ever to have lived. They were hunted to the brink of extinction in the twentieth century, but efforts were made on a global scale, and it saved them. The Museum has named the female blue whale Hope, as a symbol of humanity’s power to shape a sustainable future.

Missouri Leviathan: American mastodon

American mastodon was a large land mammal that roamed North America throughout the Ice Age until as recently as 13,000 years ago. They were distant, relative of living elephants. Albert Koch a fossil showman found this fossil in Missouri, USA. He named it the Missouri Leviathan – referring to the biblical sea monster – as he believed it was an underwater creature. Koch travelled all over the world with his fossil show tour and the final stop of Koch’s fossil tour was London, where the mastodon was on display in an exhibition hall in Piccadilly and Richard Owen, then-Superintendent of Natural History at the British Museum, purchased Koch’s mastodon fossils for the Museum in 1844.

Moon rock:

This specimen is from the Apollo17, last crewed mission to land on moon in 1973, the samples collected were distributed as goodwill gifts to 135 countries around the world. Geologist Harrison Schmitt – the only professional scientist to reach the lunar surface – collected it from the Taurus-Littrow Valley of the Moon. Museum also have a piece from Apollo 16 on long-term loan. You can see the piece of Apollo 16 Moon rock in Earth Hall.

  • Archaeopteryx fossil                                                              (Image credit- PICRYL | License details)
Archaeopteryx fossil

This Late Jurassic period fossil is of what usually thought to be the earliest bird. This is the first skeleton specimen ever found and it is one of the most scientifically important fossils in the museum collection.

  • Moa bone fragment and skeleton:

    This is the skeleton of a giant now extinct bird from New Zealand, called Moa (Dinornis robustus).

  • Barbary lion skull:                                                            ( Image credit- Wikimedia Commons | License details)
Barbary lion skull:

This is the skull of a Barbary lion, Panthera Leo, dated to 1280-1385. The lion was part of the royal zoo in the Tower of London 700 years ago. Barbary lions were originally found in northern Africa, from Morocco to Egypt. But they were declared extinct in the wild in 1922, after centuries of over-exploitation and habitat destruction by humans.

 

  • Ostro stone

The Ostro stone is the largest cut topaz. Weighing around two kilogrammes, it is an impressive 9,381 carats and is on display in the mineral collections. The original rough material that the gemstone was cut from was discovered three decades ago by British explorer Max Ostro in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The final faceted gem is 15 centimetres long and 10.5 centimetres wide.

The dinosaur Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis:

Skeleton of Mantellisaurus, which would have lived during the Early Cretaceous Period around 125-110 million years ago in what is now western Europe.

  • The giant sequoia slice:
The giant sequoia slice:

The specimen has been in the Museum since 1893, after the tree was felled in California. This sequoia has a long history. The tree was 1,300 years old and 101 metres tall when it was felled. Its incredible lifespan is evident in its many rings.

  • The Imilac meteorite:

At 4.5 billion years old, the Imilac meteorite dates to the beginning of our solar system. This is a Pallasite meteorite and theseare formed in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. They are made up of minerals and metal, remnant materials from the first few million years of the solar system. This type of meteorite is made from iron, nickel metal and a mineral called olivine.

Attenborosaurus:
Image credit-Wikimedia Commons | License details

This long-necked skeleton is Attenborosaurus, an extinct marine reptile named after legendary broadcaster Sir David Attenborough. Attenborosaurus was a plesiosaur, a reptile with a long neck, round body and four limb paddles. It lived about 190 million years ago and swam in tropical seas that covered land which now makes up the south coast of England.

  • Andy’s clock
Andy's clock

See the clock from the CBeebies shows Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures and Andy’s Prehistoric Adventures in the Central Cafe near Hintze Hall.

Andy’s clock is currently at the Museum until Andy needs it back for his next adventure. This could be at any time, so we can’t guarantee that it will be here during your visit. 

Sophie the Stegosaurus

The skeleton was discovered in 2003 by professional fossil hunter Bob Simon, who was digging at a site called Red Canyon Ranch in Wyoming.It was a special find, because most of the Stegosaurus skeletons that are found are incomplete. Prof Paul Barrett has been a dinosaur expert at the Museum for nearly 15 years.This skeleton is very special, not just because it is complete, but also because the bones have been preserved in three dimensions instead of being squashed over time, as happens with many other fossils.

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