American Museum of Natural History

The conception of the American Museum of Natural History is credited to Albert Smith Bickmore, a naturalist who had studied under Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz. Bickmore began advocating for the creation of a natural history museum in New York City as early as 1861. After years of persistent effort, he secured the support of prominent New Yorkers including William E. Dodge Jr., Theodore Roosevelt Sr. (father of the future president), Joseph Choate, and the financier J. Pierpont Morgan. On April 6, 1869, Governor John Thompson Hoffman signed the Act of Incorporation, officially establishing the American Museum of Natural History. John David Wolfe became its first president that same year.

The museum's first exhibits were displayed beginning in 1871 in the Central Park Arsenal, a building on the eastern side of Central Park. The institution quickly outgrew this space, and a new site was secured at Manhattan Square, a city block between West 77th and 81st Streets directly across from Central Park. The architects Calvert Vaux and J. Wrey Mould prepared an ambitious master plan for the site, envisioning an enormous five-story structure with a Greek-cross layout. President Ulysses S. Grant laid the cornerstone for the first permanent building in 1874, and it opened in 1877 with President Rutherford B. Hayes presiding over the ceremony.

Under the presidency of Morris K. Jesup (beginning in 1881), the museum entered a golden age of global exploration. During this period, museum-sponsored expeditions reached every continent, explored unmapped regions of Siberia, traversed the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, and penetrated deep into the Congo. Jesup hired the pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas as assistant curator in the Department of Ethnology in 1895, and Boas organized the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902), an unprecedented study of the peoples of the North Pacific region.

In 1895, the museum acquired the extensive fossil collection of Edward Drinker Cope, one of the principal combatants in the famous "Bone Wars." Cope's collection of approximately 10,000 American fossil mammals was purchased for $32,000, significantly bolstering the museum's paleontological holdings.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, a trained paleontologist, became the museum's president in 1908—the first scientist to hold that position. Osborn's 45-year career at the institution transformed the AMNH into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. He named and described some of the most famous dinosaurs in science, including Tyrannosaurus rex (1905) and Velociraptor (1924), based on specimens collected by museum expeditions.

Barnum Brown, often called the greatest fossil hunter in history, served as curator in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology and spent 66 years collecting for the museum. In 1902, Brown discovered the first partial skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. Six years later, in 1908, he found a nearly complete T. rex skeleton at Big Dry Creek, Montana (specimen AMNH 5027), which became the first T. rex ever mounted for public display and remained an icon of the museum for decades.

Among the most celebrated scientific ventures in the museum's history are the Central Asiatic Expeditions, led by Roy Chapman Andrews between 1921 and 1930. Walter Granger served as chief paleontologist and second-in-command, and the team included up to 40 scientists, drivers, and assistants supported by a fleet of motor cars and a caravan of camels.

The expeditions focused on the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and yielded groundbreaking discoveries. In 1923, at a locality Andrews named the Flaming Cliffs, the team discovered the first scientifically recognized dinosaur eggs, providing direct evidence that dinosaurs were egg-laying animals. The expeditions also uncovered Protoceratops, Velociraptor, and Oviraptor—genera that became central to understanding Cretaceous ecosystems. Andrews originally attributed the eggs to Protoceratops (then the most common dinosaur fossil in the area) and named a small theropod found atop the nest Oviraptor ("egg thief"), a designation that was later shown to be a misinterpretation when subsequent discoveries revealed that the eggs actually belonged to Oviraptor itself.

The Central Asiatic Expeditions cemented the Gobi as one of the world's premier fossil localities and captured global public imagination. Andrews, who had begun his museum career sweeping floors, eventually became the museum's director in 1935 and is widely considered a real-life inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones.

The museum's fourth floor is dedicated to its renowned fossil halls, which underwent a major renovation completed in 1996. The reorganized halls include the Hall of Vertebrate Origins, the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs, the Hall of Primitive Mammals, the Paul and Irma Milstein Hall of Advanced Mammals, and the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Orientation Center. Together, these halls display over 600 fossil specimens—including approximately 100 dinosaur specimens—of which 85 percent are actual fossils rather than casts or reproductions.

The exhibits are organized cladistically, reflecting evolutionary relationships rather than following a simple chronological arrangement. A thick black line on the floor traces the "trunk" of the vertebrate evolutionary tree, with branching points marking the evolution of key anatomical features. Visitors walk along the tree and can explore side alcoves containing groups of closely related organisms.

Notable display specimens include the Tyrannosaurus rex mount in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, the Apatosaurus composite skeleton, and the Triceratops and Stegosaurus mounts in the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs. In 1991, a five-story-high cast of a Barosaurus rearing on its hind legs to defend its young from an attacking Allosaurus was installed in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, becoming the world's tallest freestanding dinosaur display at approximately 50 feet (15 m). In 2016, the museum unveiled a life-sized cast of Patagotitan mayorum, a titanosaur discovered in Argentina in 2014, measuring 122 feet (37.2 m) long—so large that its neck and head extend out of the Wallach Orientation Center into the hallway.

The Division of Paleontology holds an estimated 5 million specimens, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive fossil collections in the world. The collection is divided into five units: Fossil Amphibians, Reptiles, and Birds (FARB); Fossil Fish (FF); Fossil Invertebrates (FI); Fossil Mammals (FM); and Fossil Plants (FP). Only a minute fraction of these holdings—approximately 0.02 percent of the vertebrate paleontology specimens—is on public display at any given time. The division also maintains an extensive archive of field notes, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, scientific illustrations, and artworks related to its collection history.

The museum's collections have been built through more than 150 years of field expeditions and acquisitions. Key contributions include Cope's 1895 fossil mammal collection, Barnum Brown's decades of fieldwork across North America, the Central Asiatic Expedition materials, and ongoing collaborative paleontological expeditions. Since 1991, the museum has participated in joint expeditions to the Gobi Desert with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, resuming Western scientific access to the region for the first time since the 1920s. These modern Gobi expeditions take place annually and continue to produce significant discoveries.

Beyond paleontology, the AMNH houses major research divisions in anthropology (established 1873), vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, physical sciences, and Earth and planetary sciences. The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space, opened in 2000, contains the rebuilt Hayden Planetarium (the original opened in 1935) and the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth. The Akeley Hall of African Mammals, completed in 1942, showcases habitat dioramas widely regarded as the finest in the world, created using techniques pioneered by taxidermist Carl Akeley. The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins (2007) presents comprehensive evidence of human evolution.

In 2023, the museum opened the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, a 230,000-gross-square-foot addition designed by Studio Gang. The Gilder Center features an insectarium, a permanent butterfly vivarium, an immersive theater, redesigned library spaces, and state-of-the-art classrooms, serving as a new gateway connecting the museum's research, exhibition, and education programs.

The AMNH has played a defining role in the development of vertebrate paleontology as a scientific discipline. Its researchers have named and described hundreds of fossil species. The institution's emphasis on fieldwork, systematic collecting, and public exhibition established a model for natural history museums worldwide. Key figures in the museum's paleontological history—Osborn, Brown, Andrews, Granger, William Diller Matthew, Edwin H. Colbert, and many others—shaped fundamental understandings of dinosaur evolution, mammalian radiation, and biogeography.

The museum's influence extends to the concept of cladistic exhibition design, pioneered in its 1996 fossil hall renovation, which organized specimens by evolutionary relationships rather than arbitrary groupings. This approach, developed in collaboration with paleontologists and exhibit designers, became a standard for museum exhibition worldwide.

The AMNH holds a prominent place in popular culture. It served as the setting for the 2006 film Night at the Museum (directed by Shawn Levy, starring Ben Stiller), which depicted the museum's exhibits coming to life after dark. The film grossed approximately $574.5 million worldwide and spawned two sequels: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014). Following the first film's premiere at the museum, the AMNH inaugurated "Night at the Museum Sleepovers" for families with children ages 6 to 13.

The museum's iconic dinosaur halls, the Barosaurus mount in the Roosevelt Rotunda, and the blue whale model suspended from the ceiling of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life are among the most recognizable natural history displays in the world, visited by millions annually and featured extensively in books, documentaries, and other media.