Only Have an Hour | Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Only Have an Hour?

Refer to this handy guide if you only have a short time to visit the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. We have carefully selected items, exhibits and activities to help you locate and experience some of the most wondrous, weirdest, biggest, smallest, most surprising, and extraordinary things at the Museum. 

Level 1

Dueling Dinosaurs (1, Grand Foyer)

Pose and snap a picture with the dynamic dinosaurs dueling in the Museum’s Level 1 Grand Foyer. The display features replicas of an authentic T. rex and Triceratops from our collection. Behind-the-scenes fact: The Museum had to take the doors off the entrance just to get these enormous dinos into the Grand Foyer!

Something gold and something old (1, Hall of Gems and Minerals)

Catch a glimpse of the largest gold nugget in captivity, the 156 troy ounce, “Mohave Nugget.” With subtle lighting and design effects you can imagine what it was like underground as you explore our Native Gold exhibit. Ours is one of the largest exhibits of all-natural gold in the world, and features over 300 pounds total weight in gold, displayed in many of its most surprising forms.

Have you ever wondered what is the oldest thing in the Museum? Just around the corner from all that gold you’ll discover something really old! Great balls of fire! The Museum’s meteorite exhibit features specimens that are 4.5 billion years old, easily some of the oldest objects you’re likely to see anywhere.

Life-like animals in realistic environments (1, African Mammal Hall)

All of our state-of-art dioramas are mesmerizing and it would be quite easy to breeze through the hall, taking it in, while never knowing how much detail you’re missing. Stop and stare at each diorama and you’ll find hundreds of mammals and other creatures — and we’re continually adding more. Make sure you spend some time with the ratel, also known as the honey badger because this animal has a symbiotic relationship with the honey guide bird. The bird leads the ratel to a beehive and then waits until after the ratel has eaten the honey to feed on the larvae and wax left over from the ratel’s meal. 

American home life a hundred years ago (1, American History Hall)

Our American History Hall’s House platform showcases furniture, appliances, decorative elements, and commercial items that reflect significant changes in American home life at the beginning of the twentieth century. See just how hard it was to wash clothes and you’ll never complain about doing your laundry again!

North American Mammals (1 and 2)

The world-class dioramas in both of our North American Mammal Halls are breathtakingly realistic and offer a wide range of fascinating environments. It’s like taking a continental vacation all in one place. Visit offshore islands, grasslands, prairies, desert, mountains, tropical rainforests, redwood forests, and arctic ice flows where the polar bears roam. Did you know that hidden below a polar bear’s beautiful white fur is black skin? But don’t let the polar bear distract you so much that you miss the arctic fox — he’s foxy and tough to spot.

The second of our North American Mammal halls is located just one level above and features more of these incredible dioramas jam-packed with so many specimens and environmental details that you’ll always discover something you haven’t seen before. Many of our dioramas were first created in the 1930s, but we’ve created new ones since then. Can you tell which are the newest displays?

Take a minute to notice the magnificent backdrops for the dioramas. They were painted by noteworthy artists, and are valued pieces of fine art in their own right.

Butterfly Pavilon (1, Seasonal, South Lawn)

Don’t miss more than 40 different butterfly and moth species and an array of plants take up residence every summer for our much-anticipated seasonal exhibit, the Butterfly Pavilion. This breathtaking exhibit is a beautifully landscaped enclosure where live butterflies and moths fly free, and where plants live and grow in a thriving ecosystem.

Spider Pavilion (1, Seasonal, South Lawn)

Discover the truth about spiders. You may be surprised at how much false information about spiders has been buzzing around in your head. Examine our free-range spiders up close and personal in a comfortable, safe and immersive environment. Our one-of-a-kind seasonal Spider Pavilion is a beautifully landscaped area on the Museum’s South Lawn where spiders freely spin their spectacular webs for all to see.

Level 2

Visible Vault: Archaelogical Treasures from Ancient Latin America (2)

On view from our storage: more than 600 of the most fascinating artifacts and treasures from Ancient America illustrating the sophistication and diversity of the civilizations that thrived throughout the Americas prior to European exploration.

We’ve displayed the exhibit’s objects in a non-traditional way to give visitors a sense of the museum behind-the-scenes. Artifacts are protected for safekeeping as they would be in our actual storeroom. Dim, dramatic exhibit lighting showcases the artifacts, which are largely ceremonial in nature, as they might have been viewed in the past — within the confines of dark temples for instance.

Behind-the-scenes peek at paleontology (2, Dino Lab)

Witness first hand the fascinating dinosaur preparation process at the Dino Lab on Level 2. Everything you see in the lab is real. We’re working on specimens for our brand new state-of-the art dinosaur galleries opening in 2011. Check out authentic fossils and see our staff working on the day-to-day details. We’re restoring, remounting and repositioning the dinos from our existing collection. And we’re preparing numerous new specimens collected within the last decade via our field program. And, in case you’re itching to make first-hand contact with some of these incredible fossils yourself, we’ve provided a footprint and toe bone of a T. rex — actual fossils that are 66 and 120 million years old that you can touch! 

Bird’s nest soup (2, Hall of Birds)

Did you know that swiftlet nests are made entirely from bird saliva? And if you think that sounds outlandish: Climbers in Southeast Asia collect these nests by ascending ladders that go up hundreds of feet into caves. And then they use them to make soup. Not everyone wants to go to such lengths for a bowl of soup, but perhaps the swiftlet nest specimen in our case will whet your appetite.

Level G

Modeling Los Angeles (G, California History Hall)

Don’t miss the opportunity to see how much Los Angeles has reinvented itself in the past 60+ years. While visiting our California History Hall, inspect the elaborate 3-D scale model of downtown L.A. in the 1930s, which catalogues the city, block by block. The model was a project of the U.S. Works Progress Administration. From 1938 to 1940, a team of City Planning Department model makers, draftsmen, and architects surveyed the central city and built a thorough representation. While the downtown area has changed dramatically since the model was made, you can still spot old landmarks such as Union Station, City Hall, the Bradbury Building, and the Old Plaza.