Peabody Museum of Natural History facts for kids
Entrance to the Peabody Museum
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| Established | 1866 |
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| Location | New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Type |  Natural History |
| Owner | Yale University |
| Public transit access |   228, 229 |
The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is one of the oldest and biggest natural history museums connected to a university anywhere. It was started by George Peabody in 1866. He was a generous person, and his nephew, Othniel Charles Marsh (who studied fossils), asked him to create it.
The museum is famous for its Great Hall of Dinosaurs. This hall has a huge Brontosaurus skeleton and a giant mural called The Age of Reptiles. The museum also has cool exhibits about how humans and mammals have changed over time. You can see amazing wildlife dioramas, ancient Egyptian artifacts, local birds, and shiny minerals. There are also displays about Native Americans from Connecticut.
In 2020, the Peabody Museum closed for its first big renovation in 90 years. It reopened on March 26, 2024, with more than twice the space for exhibits!
Contents
About the Museum
The Peabody Museum is located at 170 Whitney Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut. Many people work there to keep it running. The first museum building was taken down in 1917. The museum then moved to its current spot in 1925. Since then, it has grown to include several other buildings and even a field station near Long Island Sound.
The museum also owns Horse Island in the Thimble Islands. This island is not open to visitors, but it is used for scientific experiments. About half of the museum's 13 million specimens (like fossils and artifacts) are kept in the Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center. This building was finished in 2001 and is connected to the museum.
In 2018, Yale University received a huge gift of $160 million from Edward P. Bass. This money helped pay for the museum's big makeover and expansion. It was one of the largest gifts ever given to a natural history museum in the United States.
The museum's galleries were supposed to stay open until June 2020. However, they had to close early in March because of COVID-19. They did not reopen until the renovations were finished in 2024. The renovation more than doubled the space for exhibits. It also added 10 new classrooms and a special education center for students from kindergarten to 12th grade.
In November 2021, Yale University announced that admission to the museum will be free forever once the construction is complete.
The Peabody Museum has some very important collections. Its collection of vertebrate fossils (like dinosaur bones) is one of the largest and most important in the United States. It also has the Hiram Bingham Collection of Incan artifacts from Machu Picchu. Hiram Bingham was a famous Yale archaeologist who rediscovered this ancient city in Peru.
The museum also has a huge collection of birds, which is one of the biggest in the world. The William Robertson Coe Ornithology Library, which is part of the museum, has one of the best bird-related book collections in the United States. The collection of sea creatures without backbones (like crabs and jellyfish) is also very large. The Yale Herbarium, which is a collection of preserved plants, is also part of the Peabody Museum.
Meet Torosaurus
Right next to the museum's entrance on Whitney Avenue, you can see the first full-size sculpture of a Torosaurus. This amazing statue is 3 meters (9 feet) tall and 7 meters (21 feet) long. It weighs 3.33 metric tons (7,350 pounds)!
The statue was made from clay and then cast in bronze. It sits on a 4-meter (13-foot) tall granite base. This Torosaurus sculpture is very accurate scientifically. Its skin is even based on fossilized skin from a Chasmosaurus, which is a dinosaur closely related to Torosaurus.
Museum Exhibits
Before the renovations, the museum had many permanent exhibits. Many of these are still there or have been updated:
- The Great Hall of Dinosaurs is still a main attraction. It features the skeleton of a Brontosaurus.
- The Age of Reptiles Mural is a huge painting, 110 feet (34 meters) long. It shows dinosaurs in their natural homes. This mural was painted by Rudolph F. Zallinger and is in the Great Hall of Dinosaurs.
- Fossil Fragments: The Riddle of Human Origins is a newer exhibit. It teaches about how humans have changed over time.
- The Birds of Connecticut Hall has 722 bird specimens. These represent more than 300 different bird species found in Connecticut.
- There are eleven dioramas that show the different environments and animals of Connecticut.
- The Hall of Mammalian Evolution includes another mural by Zallinger. It is called The Age of Mammals.
- You can see a large collection of minerals, mostly from Connecticut.
- There are also Native American artifacts from Connecticut.
- The Hall of Ancient Egyptian Artifacts displays items from ancient Egypt.
- The museum has shown one of the longest preserved fulgurites. A fulgurite is a glass tube formed when lightning strikes sand. This one is about 4 meters (13 feet) long.
Museum Staff
As of 2024, the director of the Peabody Museum is David Skelly. He is a professor who studies ecology and vertebrate animals. He became the director in 2014.
The Peabody Museum has many experts called curators. These curators specialize in different areas like anthropology (the study of humans), botany (plants), entomology (insects), and different types of zoology (animals). They also specialize in paleontology (fossils), mineralogy (minerals), and meteoritics (meteorites).
The museum has almost 100 full-time and part-time staff members. This includes curators, assistant curators, and many volunteers. The curators are also teachers at Yale University in related departments.
Museum History
Othniel Charles Marsh was a student and later a professor at Yale University. His rich uncle, George Peabody, paid for his education. George Peabody later gave away a lot of his money to schools and museums. Marsh and his teams found many new types of dinosaurs and other fossil animals. These included famous dinosaurs like Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and Hesperornis.
Marsh asked his uncle to create a museum to hold some of his discoveries. So, in 1866, George Peabody started Yale's Museum of Natural History with a gift of $150,000.
At that time, Yale's collection was mostly minerals. These were collected by a geologist named Benjamin Silliman. Marsh was one of the museum's first three curators. When George Peabody died in 1869, Marsh used his inheritance to fund trips to find more specimens. This greatly increased the museum's collections. Marsh was most interested in dinosaurs. During a time known as the Bone Wars, he discovered 56 new dinosaur species. He shipped tons of fossils back from the American Southwest. His finds also included fossils of other animals, ancient animal tracks, and archaeological items.
The museum officially opened to the public in 1876. In 1917, the original building was taken down. Most of the collections were put into storage during World War I. The current museum building was opened in December 1925. The new building had a large, two-story hall made just for Marsh's dinosaurs.
Here are some other important events in the museum's history:
- In 1930, the Harry Payne Bingham Oceanographic Collection was donated.
- In 1931, the Brontosaurus skeleton was finally put together after six years of work.
- In 1947, Rudolph F. Zallinger finished his 110-foot (34-meter) long mural, The Age of Reptiles. It took him three and a half years to paint!
- In 1972, the Birds of Connecticut Hall opened.
- In 1985, the museum received many specimens from Princeton University when their paleontology program closed.
- In 2001, the Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center was built. It holds many of the museum's collections.
- In 2005, the Peabody showed off its 21-foot (6.4-meter) life-size bronze sculpture of Torosaurus. This was one of O.C. Marsh's famous dinosaur discoveries.
- In 2018, the Peabody announced a huge gift of $160 million. This money would help with a big renovation to make the museum even better for research, education, and exhibits.
- In 2020, the Great Hall closed at the beginning of the year. The rest of the museum closed in March. Many artifacts were moved to another campus in December.
Images for kids
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Entrance to the Peabody Museum
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Original Peabody Museum (1874)
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Displays of minerals (c. 1879)
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The museum as shown on a postcard mailed in 1909
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An ornithology exhibit
See also
In Spanish: Museo Peabody de Historia Natural para niños
