Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, USA in 1913 as the Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building, with fitted marble walls and domed and colonnaded rotunda, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Additional wings opened in 1925, 1930, 1960, and 1976.

The museum was divided in 1961 into the Los Angeles County Museum of History and Science and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). LACMA moved to new quarters on Wilshire Boulevard in 1965, and the Museum of History and Science was renamed the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Eventually, the museum renamed itself again, becoming the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

The museum is the largest in the western United States, and its collections include nearly 33 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. The museum maintains research and collections in the following fields:

• Annelida
• Archaeology
• Ethnology
• Botany
• Crustacea
• Echinoderms
• Entomology
• Herpetology
• History
• Ichthyology
• Invertebrate paleontology
• Malacology
• Mammalogy
• Mineralogy
• Ornithology
• Vertebrate paleontology

The museum has three floors of permanent exhibits. Among the most popular museum displays are those devoted to animal habitats, dinosaurs, pre-Colombian cultures, and the Ralph M. Parsons Discovery Center and Insect Zoo.

The museum has two satellites, the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits and the William S. Hart Ranch and Museum.

The museum's collections are strong in many fields, but the mineralogy and Pleistocene paleontology are the most esteemed, the latter thanks to the wealth of specimens collected from the famed La Brea Tar Pits.

Over the years, the museum has built additions onto its original building. The domed rotunda features a bronze sculpture of the three Muses holding up the world, representing the three subject areas to which the museum was dedicated in 1913. This hall is among the most distinctive locales in Los Angeles and has often been used as a filming location.

External links

• Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County official website
• William S. Hart Ranch and Museum
• George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits

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