A fossil is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the fossil record. Though the fossil record is incomplete, numerous studies have demonstrated that there is enough information available to give a good understanding of the pattern of diversification of life on Earth. In addition, the record can predict and fill gaps such as the discovery of Tiktaalik in the arctic of Canada.
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year, making it the most-visited museum in Canada. It is north of Queen's Park, in the University of Toronto district, with its main entrance on Bloor Street West. Museum subway station is named after it and, since a 2008 renovation, is decorated to resemble the ROM's collection at the platform level; Museum station's northwestern entrance directly serves the museum.
"Archaeoraptor" is the informal generic name for a fossil chimera from China in an article published in National Geographic magazine in 1999. The magazine claimed that the fossil was a "missing link" between birds and terrestrial theropod dinosaurs. Even before this publication, there had been severe doubts about the fossil's authenticity. A further scientific study showed it to be a forgery constructed from rearranged pieces of real fossils from different species. Zhou et al. found that the head and upper body belong to a specimen of the primitive fossil bird Yanornis. A 2002 study found that the tail belongs to a small winged dromaeosaur, Microraptor, named in 2000. The legs and feet belong to an as-yet-unknown-animal.
The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 million visitors in 2023, it was the third most-visited museum in the United States.
Orgueil is a scientifically important carbonaceous chondrite meteorite that fell in southwestern France in 1864.
The National Dinosaur Museum is Australia's largest permanent display of prehistoric specimens, located in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. It is located in Gold Creek Village, an area within the suburb of Nicholls.
The Leicester Museum & Art Gallery is a museum on New Walk in Leicester, England, not far from the city centre. It opened in 1849 as one of the first public museums in the United Kingdom. Leicester Museum & Art Gallery contains displays of science, history and art, both international and local. The original building was designed by Joseph Hansom, designer of the hansom cab. It has been expanded several times, most recently in 2011.
The UW–Madison Geology Museum (UWGM) is a geology and paleontology museum housed in Weeks Hall, in the southwest part of the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. The museum's main undertakings are exhibits, outreach to the public, and research. It has the second highest attendance of any museum at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, exceeded only by the Chazen Museum of Art. The museum charges no admission.
The Iziko South African Museum, formerly the South African Museum, is a South African national museum located in Cape Town. The museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It has been on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897. The museum houses important African zoology, palaeontology, and archaeology collections.
The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano is a museum in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1838 when the naturalist Giuseppe de Cristoforis donated his collections to the city. Its first director was the taxonomist Giorgio Jan.
The Geological Museum of China, built in 1916, is a geological museum, boasting 200 thousand specimens.
Tyrannosaurus is one of the most iconic dinosaurs and is known from numerous specimens, some of which have individually acquired notability due to their scientific significance and media coverage.
John Albert Long is an Australian paleontologist who is currently Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. He was previously the Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He is also an author of popular science books. His main area of research is on the fossil fish of the Late Devonian Gogo Formation from northern Western Australia. It has yielded many important insights into fish evolution, such as Gogonasus and Materpiscis, the later specimen being crucial to our understanding of the origins of vertebrate reproduction. Further research on Gogo fishes included a perfect new colecanth Ngamugawi wirngarri, which showed through detailed analysis how coelacanth evolution had been influenced by plate tectonic movements.
The Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals is a non-profit museum in Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Located just north of the Sunset Highway on the northern edge of Hillsboro, the earth science museum is in the Portland metropolitan area. Opened in 1997, the museum's collections date to the 1930s with the museum housed in a home built to display the rock and mineral collections of the museum founders. The ranch-style home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the first of its kind listed in Oregon. In 2015 the museum became a Smithsonian Affiliate museum.
The Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum - Home of the Somerville Collection is located in the city of Bathurst in regional New South Wales Australia and was opened in July 2004. The collection is housed in a group of heritage buildings, the old 1874 public school buildings, in the centre of the city. Nearly 2000 specimens are on display from the internationally renowned Somerville Collection.
The Sintra Natural History Museum is a museum of natural history located in the historic center of the village of Sintra. The museum has both at national and international level due to the quality and rarity of many of its exhibits.
The Gargoti Museum is a museum in the town Sinnar near Nashik in Indian state of Maharashtra that houses a collection of natural mineral and gem specimens collected by K. C. Pandey over 40 years. The word "goti" refers to a Marathi word meaning stone or pebble. This is India's first and only gem, mineral, and fossil museum. It also houses the largest and finest collection of Indian zeolite minerals and crystals in the world.
The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is one of the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It was founded by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 at the behest of his nephew Othniel Charles Marsh, an early paleontologist. The museum is best known for the Great Hall of Dinosaurs, which includes a mounted juvenile Brontosaurus and the 110-foot-long (34 m) mural The Age of Reptiles. The museum also has permanent exhibits dedicated to human and mammal evolution; wildlife dioramas; Egyptian artifacts; local birds and minerals; and Native Americans of Connecticut.
Weis Earth Science Museum, located at 1478 Midway Rd, on the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, Fox Cities Campus in Menasha, Wisconsin, USA, was opened in 2002. It focuses on Wisconsin geology and its mining history. As such, it was designated as the Official Mineralogical Museum of Wisconsin by then-Governor Tommy Thompson in 2000, prior to its construction.
Rosie is a preserved great white shark located at Crystal World Exhibition Centre in Devon Meadows, Australia. She was originally preserved in a glass tank of formaldehyde on display at Wildlife Wonderland in Bass, Victoria which closed in 2012 due to animal welfare concerns and operating without appropriate licences. She was an urban exploration destination at the abandoned park until being recovered and transferred to the Crystal World Exhibition Centre, where she is undergoing restoration.
