DISCOVERY CENTER - A place to Learn, Interact, and Explore!

What’s Inside
The Discovery Center is a place you won’t want to miss on your visit to the Natural History Museum. Children of all ages will enjoy this thoroughly hands on experience. The uniqueness of the Discovery Center lies in the fact that almost all of the artifacts you’ll encounter are TOUCHABLE! There are puppets, puzzles, storybooks, bones, furs, rocks, minerals, artifacts, and more. We also have an area where children can dig for dinosaur fossils, perfect for the amateur paleontologists in your family.

Our Live Animals
The Discovery Center is also the home to the museum’s live animal collection. We invite visitors to come and meet our 12-foot Burmese Python, Jay and our Iguana, Cecil. In addition to these radical reptiles, the Discovery Center also has an exciting variety of local and exotic species of amphibians and fish.

We offer a 3:00 pm animal presentation during the week and 11:00 am and 3:00 pm presentations on weekends and holidays. These presentations are a special way to get to know one or many of our animals in more detail. You’ll learn all sorts of neat facts from what they like to eat to where you might find them in the wild.

Visitor Information
The Discover Center is located on the ground floor and is open from 10:00 to 4:45 daily. Special reservations are only required if you plan to come with a school or large group. We hope you enjoy your visit to the Natural History Museum and look forward to seeing you in the Discovery Center.

Schedule of events