Come along to see the sights of the London Natural History Museum. See many life and science photos below. With a collection of 70 million items, I tried to only choose the really neat ones. In the main hall the terracotta bricks depict various animals including these monkeys. IMG_7999 IMG_8006 Main hall of the museum IMG_8007 A koala, although the nose looks a bit large IMG_8009 There was quite a line around this roaring/moving dinosaur model. I'm sure someone found it authentic or frightening, but those people were probably under 3 feet tall. IMG_8013 This display of violent (and quite rare) stuffed dinosaur specimens was more disturbing IMG_8020 An escalator takes you into an exploration of the Earth! IMG_8027 Good question...How does the Earth work? I bet they'll let me know before I find the escalator out IMG_8032 Another view of the escalator...still don't know how the Earth works IMG_8037 Ahhh...I see how the Earth works, it's a pendulum. Here you can see the current state of the Earth, now which way it was headed I don't quite recall IMG_8038 Who knew Canada had pretty crystals? Idocrase - bright-green crystals Jeffrey mine, Quebec, Canada IMG_8045 These are green...that's as much as I know IMG_8047 Now did they really need a sample this large - I'm sure a smaller one would have sufficed and they could give away the rest of it Crystalline gold attached to quartz Eagle's Nest mine, Placer Co., California, USA IMG_8049 In an area dedicated to building materials the museum takes the chance to use itself as an example regarding the terracotta bricks used in the structure IMG_8052 The statue of the man the dinosaur tail is about to lash is Sir Richard Owen who looks much scarier in Wikipedia than in the statue. "Following the Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin had at his disposal a considerable collection of specimens and, on 29 October 1836, he was introduced by Charles Lyell to Owen, who agreed to work on fossil bones collected in South America. Owen's subsequent revelations, that extinct giant creatures were rodents and sloths, showed that they were related to current species in the same locality, rather than being relatives of similarly sized creatures in Africa, as Darwin had originally thought. This was a spur to the inception of Darwin's theory of natural selection." - Wikipedia article above IMG_8065 Exterior of the museum IMG_8070 Reptiles! IMG_8071 I don't think these are real animals... IMG_8072 Return to Features