Website: https://www.mnhn.fr/en
The Collections: Visiting the MNHN collections this summer was one of the highlights of my academic career. I was interested in South American sloths and European cats, but as one of the world's great natural history museums, the collections spans the globe and the history of life. Many of the specimens here were collected and described by Georges Cuvier, preeminent comparative anatomist and the developer of the concept of extinction.
The Exhibits: The Gallery of Comparative Anatomy and Paleontology is a museum of a museum, much of it still organized the way Cuvier designed it. Highlights include a rhino from Louis XIV's menagerie, the "Cetaceum" of whale skeletons, phosphatized frogs from Quercy, and an impressive diversity of Pleistocene birds and mammals (as well as a personal favorite, a rare specimen of the giant dragonfly relative Meganuera). If fossils and skeletons aren't your thing, the MNHN also administers a series of museums and a zoo (and an extinct animal carousel!) in the Jardin des Plantes, as well as the Musee de le Homme at the Trocadero, which not only is chock full of important Cro-Magnon and Neandertal fossils but has about the best view of the Eiffel Tower that you'll find anywhere in the city.
Gift Ideas: Christine Argot, the collections manager at the MNHN, recently published the gorgeously illustrated Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom. I have a copy and can attest that it's absolutely beautiful!
No comments:
Post a Comment