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Giganotosaurus, one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs and even larger than Tyrannosaurus rex, is on display at the new Ultimate Dinosaurs exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Giganotosaurus, one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs and even larger than Tyrannosaurus rex, is on display at the new Ultimate Dinosaurs exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

San Diego Natural History Museum

The San Diego Natural History Museum is a museum located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It was founded in 1874 as the San Diego Society of Natural History. It is the third oldest scientific institution west of the Mississippi and the oldest in Southern California. The present location of the museum was dedicated on January 14, 1933. A major addition to the museum was dedicated in April 2001, doubling exhibit space.

Collections added to the Natural History Museum after its 1933 opening include the George H. Field collection of insects, the Ingersoll collection of birds’ eggs and nests, the Bumstead collection of game heads, a model of the Pacific Ocean bottom, the Valentien wild-flower paintings, the Bancroft collection of birds, the Moore collection of beetles, the Glassell collection of crustacea, the Fuller collection of birds’ eggs, the Cleveland collection of minerals, the Beckwith collection of shells, the Lowe collection of shells, the Sharp egg collection, the Bancroft egg collection, the Purer botanical collection of 4,000 sheets, the Jewett collection of birds and mammals, the B. Bailey collection of birds and  mammals, and the Graham shell collection.

Museum Exhibition Upgrades of 2006

On July 1, 2006 the Museum of Natural History opened a permanent exhibit that occupies most of the second floor of the north wing, or original portion, of the building prior to its expansion in 2001. The 9.700 square feet exhibit, titled “Fossil Mysteries,” attempts to show how species evolved and became extinct in the San Diego and Baja California regions during the Cretaceous (144 to 65 million years ago), Eocene (34 to 55 million years ago), Oligocene (24 to 34 million years ago), Miocene (5 to 24 million years ago) Pliocene (1.8 to 5 million years ago), and Pleistocene (10,000 to 1.8 million years ago) Periods. Based on surveys, the exhibit from the Cretaceous Period will appeal to most visitors. Here pictures, replicas and fossil bones of such regionally-found dinosaurs as the Albertosaurus, the Lambeosaurus and the Ankylosaur are featured, along with egg fossils and facsimiles from these and other dinosaurs that were found in the San Diego and Baja California regions.

It is intimated, rather than affirmed, that the mass extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous was the result of a massive meteor impact. Bird, animal and marine life extinctions occurred at varying times during subsequent periods. The decline and loss of species is attributed to the moving of tectonic plates and to climatic changes, including the expansion and contraction of glaciers that took place during the Pleistocene.

It is not suggested that flesh-eating animals may have been a factor in the extinction of vegetable-eating species, though this appears to have happened during the Holocene Period (10,000 years ago to today), with the rise of homo sapiens . Exhibits are interactive and are, for the most part, touchable. While some answers are proffered, displays are meant to stimulate questions. Though people of all ages will find the exhibits interesting, an assortment of chirps and grunts and a “Ring of Fire” map on the ceiling with 3,000 flashing fiber-optic lights that show the location of volcanoes and earthquakes will appeal most to teenagers