1. Melbourne Museum

A few years ago, back when I was blogging with at least some regularity, I posted a paleontology advent calendar featuring 24 lagerstätte with the goal of using the holiday season to help popularize fossils. I thought I'd revisit that theme this year, this time not focusing on localities but on museums in which I've carried out research. It hasn't been a great year for museums, with a low point coming in September when Brazil's national museum was destroyed in a fire. As was the case with many of us in paleontology, this loss really hit home. Both as a researcher and a tourist, visiting a museum has always felt like coming home, no matter how far afield I am. I wanted to do something to share my love of museums, to highlight the importance of collections to paleontology and other natural sciences, and to raise awareness of the many amazing museums across the globe. This is by no means a complete survey of the world's natural history museums, but I hope that the profiles I did include will inspire appreciation of both the scientific and cultural value of museums, be they in your home town or on the other side of the world.

Location: Melbourne, Australia
Website: https://museumsvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/
The Collections: I visited the Melbourne Museum in August of 2014 to collect data for a project comparing Australian and North American carnivores. The collections are rich in Pleistocene megafauna from Victoria, notably including the "marsupial lion" Thylacoleo and non-Tasmanian Tasmanian devils, with which I spent most of my time. The collections are also known for their Victorian marine fossils, including some important specimens documenting the evolution of whales. As a bonus, when I visited the paleontology collections were housed in the basement of the Royal Exhibition Building, a world heritage site and one of the more impressive buildings I've ever worked in.
The Exhibits: The Melbourne Museum is a modernist masterpiece set amidst Victorian-era Carlton Gardens, so it's worth a visit for the architecture alone. There's an obligatory dinosaur hall featuring casts of Chinese species, but the most interesting fossils are Australian and range from Precambrian banded iron formations representing some of the earliest evidence of photosynthesis to a mass grave of Paleozoic fish to polar dinosaurs to a trackway of the giant marsupial Diprotodon. If fossils aren't your thing, you're probably reading the wrong blog, but you should still visit the Melbourne Museums for its gorgeous biodiversity displays, its indoor forest, and its overview of human history and culture ranging from the earliest Australians to the present day.
Gift Ideas: Museums Victoria runs a publishing company that prints several titles on history, culture, and science. I can especially recommend the beautifully illustrated The Art of Science.