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The Natural History Museum in Los Angeles has, for close to a century, gathered creatures and curiosities across time, space, and place, from prehistoric fossils and dinosaurs to California history, Native American cultures, insects, film memorabilia, and archival research collections. Opened in 1913 in Exposition Park, it became an important home for skeletons of extinct animals being excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits and grew through decades of rotating exhibitions that earned it a reputation as Los Angeles' Smithsonian. Its holdings and displays have included the California plesiosaur found in Fresno County in 1940, Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Mamenchisaurus, ancient big cats and Columbian mammoths from the tar pits, the largest gold nugget ever found in California, jewels once worn by Queen Marie Antoinette of France, the preserved silverback gorilla Chris, Hollywood items such as Mary Pickford's curls, Fred Astaire's shoes, Lon Chaney's makeup kit, and a sketch from the set of Citizen Kane, as well as the Seaver Center for Western History Research with more than a million books, photographs, posters, maps, court records, and other documents.
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Los Angeles, California · United States
