Houston Museum of Natural Science - Houston, TX
Posted by: 
JimmyEv
N 29° 43.487 W 095° 23.360
15R E 268886 N 3290679
Everything you’d expect in a Natural Science Museum, plus excellent exhibits on chemistry, energy, malacology (the study of mollusks), Texas Wildlife, and minerals and gems. The Cockrell Butterfly Center features hundreds of live butterflies.
Waymark Code: WMYZ1
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 11/18/2006
Views: 82
The main hall of the museum, the Glassell Hall, has the typical exhibits found in natural history museums – a display on evolution, a few dinosaur skeletons, and dioramas of ecosystems featuring extinct mammals. The museum’s real strengths lie beyond this hall.
Two of the best exhibits at the museum are the Welch Chemistry Hall, with it’s in-depth chemical exhibits, and the Weiss Energy Hall, covering everything from the minutiae of oil extraction and processing to nuclear fusion.
Seven ecosystem dioramas are featured in the Hall of African Wildlife. The Hall of Texas Wildlife features dioramas depicting the ecosystems of a Big Thicket Baygall, the Big Bend, Gulf Coast Prairie, and a Balconian Cave. The Hall of Malacology takes you deep within the world of Mollusks, featuring over 900 shells representing most species within the eight classes of Mollusks. The Hall of Mineral and Gems has 500 minerals and gems carefully displayed in cases.
Hidden on the third floor is the Hall of the Americas. Artifacts and dioramas, including a walk-through replica of a Mayan temple, depict life for the Maya, Aztecs, Incas and natives of the Arctic, Northwest Coast, the Plains and the Southwest.
In the basement is an Egyptian display, and a few space-related exhibits. This is also where most of the children’s exhibits are, including a learning center.
The Cockrell Butterfly Center, a glass-encased rain forest, features hundreds of live, colorful butterflies. If you’re wearing colorful clothes, they’ll land on you. Wrapped around the center is the Hall of Entomology, with specimens of hundreds of insects.
The museum also has the usual IMAX theater and planetarium, despite it’s proximity to Space Center Houston. The gift shop is huge. Outside the museum is the Cockrell Sundial; etchings on the ground demonstrating the distance of the planets from the sun; the Kugel Ball, a huge granite orb that floats upon water; and a butterfly garden.
