Clues to help solve today's environmental challenges—from rising sea levels due to a warming climate to species loss due to habitat fragmentation—can be found by examining the Earth's distant past.
This quest is at the heart of Deep Time, a major new exhibition that will take a sweeping journey across 3.7 billion years of life on Earth and is set to open June 8, 2019, in the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils at the National Museum of Natural History. The exhibition, part of a $125 million museum renovation, will feature more than 700 specimens, including dinosaur, mammal, and reptile skeletons as well as fossils of plants, insects, and marine creatures.
"Deep Time will be fundamentally different from any other prehistoric life exhibition in that it will not just show the past," says Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History. "We're telling the whole story—starting at the beginning of life on Earth, through the present and into the future.
"We hope to inspire our millions of visitors with the capacity to understand the big story of planet Earth, inspire them to think about the future with optimism, and become agents of positive change," he says.
Exhibit Highlight
Visitors will be awed by the nation's T. rex, a formidable dinosaur that stands at the center of the exhibition, clamping its powerful jaws on the head of a hapless triceratops. Both skeletons have been assembled in lifelike poses, reflecting recent research on how they lived and moved as animals.
Donors Like You Make It Possible
The Museum launched a $70 million fundraising campaign for Deep Time. Your gift can make the difference, now and in the future. Contact the Office of Gift Planning at 888-419-7584 or legacy@si.edu to see how a legacy gift will support educational experiences for future visitors.
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