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FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, FL
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The Florida Museum of Natural History is one of the nation’s top five museums, with more than 30 million specimens, including one of the world’s largest collections of butterflies and moths. Visitors can enjoy hundreds of exotic, live butterflies in the award-winning Butterfly Rainforest, witness a South Florida Calusa Indian welcoming ceremony, experience a life-sized limestone cave and see a mammoth and mastodon from the last Ice Age.
The museum is located on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville near the intersection of Southwest 34th Street and Hull Road, and open year-round except Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Museum is home to the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, the world’s largest facility dedicated to research and education about butterflies, moths and global biodiversity. In addition to the Butterfly Rainforest exhibit, inside the McGuire Center, visitors may view thousands of Lepidoptera specimens on the “Wall of Wings,” learn about butterfly and moth biology, and observe scientists working in laboratories, preparing specimens and rearing new butterflies. Rainforest admission is $9.50 for adults ($8 Fla. Residents), and $5 for ages 3-12.
Other permanent exhibits include:
Hall of Florida Fossils: Evolution of Life and Land
Drawing upon the Museum’s internationally acclaimed fossil collections, this award-winning exhibit describes the last 65 million years of Florida’s history. Walk through time beginning with the Eocene, when Florida was underwater, to the Pleistocene when the first humans arrived 14,000 years ago.
South Florida People and Environments
This exhibit celebrates the story of native people in South Florida and the environments that have supported them. Walk along a boardwalk through a mangrove forest, travel underwater to view larger-than-life marine creatures, and visit the house of a Calusa leader.
Northwest Florida: Waterways and Wildlife
Follow water as it flows through the unique environments of northwest Florida, the most biodiverse region of the state. Explore a hardwood hammock featuring a life-sized limestone cave, a seepage bog with its carnivorous plants, a Native American trading scene and more.
Outside exhibits include the Fossil Plant Garden, landscaped with modern species of plants whose ancestors lived millions of years ago, and the Florida Wildflower and Butterfly Garden, which showcases Florida’s native wildflowers and their importance as host and nectar plants for Florida’s native butterflies.
Admission to the Museum’s permanent exhibits is free. In addition to permanent exhibits, the museum hosts a variety of temporary exhibits throughout the year, including “CSI: Crime Scene Insects” through Jan. 17, 2011. This exhibit explores one of the most fascinating areas of criminal investigation — forensic entomology. Through hands-on learning stations, examples of real field and lab equipment and intriguing case studies, the exhibit examines the effective use of insects in crime solving. Admission for CSI is $6.50 for adults ($6 Fla. Residents) $4 for ages 3-12 and free for Florida Museum Members, UF students with a valid Gator1 Card, and children 2 and younger. Combo rate tickets for the CSI and Butterfly Rainforest exhibits are available. For more information, visit www.flmnh.ufl.edu or call 352-846-2000.
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