New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
Encyclopedia
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
and science museum
Science museum
A science museum or a science centre is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of...
in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 545,852 as of the 2010 Census and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. As...
near Old Town Albuquerque
Old Town Albuquerque
Old Town is a historic district in Albuquerque, New Mexico, dating back to the founding of the city by the Spanish in 1706. Today it is a popular shopping and tourist destination. Old Town comprises about ten blocks of historic adobe buildings grouped around a central plaza...
. The Museum was founded in 1986.
The Museum's permanent exhibit halls illustrate a "journey through time", covering the birth of the Universe
(≈13.6 billion years ago) to the Ice Age
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
(≈10,000 years ago). The eight journey through time halls are as follows: Origins, Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Jurassic Super Giants, New Mexico's Seacoast, Age of Volcanoes, Evolving Grasslands, Cave Experience, and New Mexico's Ice Age. "Jurassic Super Giants" features the complete skeletons of Seismosaurus, Saurophaganax
Saurophaganax
Saurophaganax is a genus of allosaurid dinosaur from the Morrison Formation of Late Jurassic Oklahoma . Some paleontologists consider it to be a species of Allosaurus...
, Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus is a genus of armored stegosaurid dinosaur. They lived during the Late Jurassic period , some 155 to 150 million years ago in what is now western North America. In 2006, a specimen of Stegosaurus was announced from Portugal, showing that they were present in Europe as well...
, and one leg of a Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of North America. It was first described by Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax,...
. In the museum's atrium is the skeleton of Stan, a Tyrannosaurus rex
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...
measuring forty feet (≈12.2 meters) in length and twelve feet (≈3.7 meters) in height, the second largest T. rex ever found.
Bronze statues of two dinosaurs, a Pentaceratops
Pentaceratops
Pentaceratops is a genus of ceratopsid dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America. The appearance of Pentaceratops sternbergii in the fossil record marks the end of the Judithian land vertebrate age and the start of the Kirtlandian...
named "Spike" and a Albertosaurus
Albertosaurus
Albertosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, more than 70 million years ago. The type species, A. sarcophagus, was apparently restricted in range to the modern-day Canadian province of Alberta, after which...
named "Alberta", stand at the entrance. Many dinosaur fossils have been found in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, and a few of the ones on display in the museum are only known from New Mexico.
Other permanent exhibits include a planetarium
Planetarium
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...
and two floors of exhibit galleries dedicated to astronomy and space exploration. STARTUP: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution, another permanent exhibit, is dedicated to the history of the personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
, and was based on a concept by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates...
, who along with Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
started Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in Albuquerque. In May 2007, two exhibits in the STARTUP Gallery won MUSE awards from the American Association of Museums
American Association of Museums
The American Association of Museums is a non-profit association that has brought museums together since its founding in 1906, helping develop standards and best practices, gathering and sharing knowledge, and advocating on issues of concern to the museum community...
: Pizza Run - A Slice of Programming won a Silver Level MUSE Award in the category of Interactive Kiosks, and the artifact theater Rise of the Machines won a Gold Level MUSE Award in the Multimedia Installations Category.
The Museum also houses changing exhibits, a cafe, a gift store, and the Lockheed Martin DynaTheater, a giant screen theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
similar to IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
.