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The famous "Harvard Mastodon." Been matriculating here since 1846. |
The Harvard Natural History Museum is located at 26 Oxford Street in Cambridge, MA. The museum is actually the publically accessible parts of three different Harvard research institutions, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum, all of which range in age between 120 and 150 years old. That means that’s there a lot of great stuff on display, and probably even cooler stuff hidden away in the archives.
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Meteorite fragments. The geology room was full of minerals and crystals in all kinds of surreal colors, shapes, and textures. |
Incidentally, admission to the Harvard Natural History Museum also includes access to the adjoining Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. But that’s a topic for another day. We have massive sea dinosaurs, live scorpions, and glass cephalopods to get to.
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This 42-foot skeleton of the behemoth Kronosaurus. |
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Amazingly detailed glass cephalopods. It also has a room full of glass flowers that date back to the late 1800s. The plants are so realistic it's almost impossible to tell them from the real things by sight. |
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Three whale skeletons covered the entire ceiling of one of the animal exhibit rooms. |