Discoveries

Exhibitions

Deep Sea Challenger sub underwater and exploring

Pressure: James Cameron Into the Abyss

Explore the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER
Dec 12, 2022–Feb 20, 2023

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Scanning Electron Microscope Lab

See how big discoveries can come from the tiniest things in the Gem and Mineral Hall.

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Exhibition | NHM

Dinosaur Hall

Step Into Our Award-winning Exhibition, and Enter the Age of Dinosaurs

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Exhibition | LBTP

Fossil Lab

What happens after the fossils at La Brea Tar Pits are excavated? This is where you find out.

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Exhibition | LBTP

3D Theater

Travel back in time with Titans of the Ice Age.

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Events

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Museum Educator leading visitors along a path with big cat paw prints

LBTP

Tours & Activities Kids & Family Adults

Excavator Tour

The Excavator Tour explores the Fossil Lab where real paleontologists work, our historic excavation sites, and Project 23, where live excavations can be seen.

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weekly

10:30 am
1:00 pm

Monday through Friday at 1 pm; Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 am and 1 pm.

Museum Educator wearing a headset with a microphone and holding a skull.

LBTP

Tours & Activities

Discoveries From the Tar Pits

Join a Museum Educator to hear about exciting discoveries from the Tar Pits! These are short presentations highlighting lesser known stories followed by a Q&A opportunity. Topics are always changing.

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daily

3:30 pm

LBTP

Tours & Activities Kids & Family Adults

Excavator Tour

The Excavator Tour explores the Fossil Lab where real paleontologists work, our historic excavation sites, and Project 23, where live excavations can be seen.

Learn more

weekly

1:00 pm

Monday through Friday at 1 pm; Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 am and 1 pm.

LBTP

Tours & Activities

Discoveries From the Tar Pits

Join a Museum Educator to hear about exciting discoveries from the Tar Pits! These are short presentations highlighting lesser known stories followed by a Q&A opportunity. Topics are always changing.

Learn more

daily

3:30 pm

nhm

Tours & Activities

Scanning Electron Microscope Demonstration

Join an NHM scientist at the Scanning Electron Microscope Lab to learn how we use this important tool in discoveries about our natural world. Get an overview of this specialized equipment’s capabilities, see specimens in amazing detail, and have a chanc

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weekly

11:00 am

Tuesdays and Thursdays

Stories

Illustration of a long-legged crocodile-looking reptile looks at a mammal carcass on an ancient tropical islands

How Ancient Crocodile-Like Predators Ruled the Islands of the Caribbean

NHM's scientist discovers that sebicids, ancient land-dwelling crocodile-like beasts, reigned over the West Indies as apex predators after vanishing from South America

The lower jaw of a dire wolf from La Brea Tar PIts resting on a piece of paper with the words "Last known real dirw wolf in the world!!" Aenocyon dirus lower jaw 13,082 years old' written on it

Dire Wolves: Sorry, They’re Totally Still Extinct

NHM and Tar Pits experts weigh in on why dire wolves have not, in fact, been successfully cloned, and the surprising perils of de-extinction

A skeletal looking Vinciguerria mabahiss under a microscope and black background

The Lights Below

A new study shines a light on the mechanics of bioluminescence in the rare fish Vinciguerria mabahiss and we explore some of the other fish lighting up the deep

A male house finch with a little red plumage around its beak and breast alongside otherwise gray feathers being held still by a person's hand

Bird banding, Wildfire Smoke, and the Nature Gardens

Researchers band birds and collect feathers in the Nature Gardens to study the impacts of wildfire smoke on birds.

Solving a Juniper Seed Mystery at La Brea Tar Pits

How identifying a mysterious fossil seed reveals Ice Age climate change

A paleoart rendition of Eupachydiscus sp. by Cullen Townsend.

Collections Staff Help Ammonites Come Out of Their Shells

Uncovering how digitization and collections management made a groundbreaking extinction study come to life

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NHMLAC Discovery Talk with Dr. Jorge Velez-Juarbe

Join Dr. Jorge Velez-Juarbe as he explores the migration of vertebrate fauna to the Caribbean Islands and the effects of climate change on his field work.

NHMLAC Discovery Talk with Shannen Robson

Join Dr. Shannen Robson, Collections Manager of Mammalogy, as she explores how digitizing initiatives are creating novel research areas for biological collections, reshaping the roles of museum collections managers, improving educational access, and creating new opportunities for collaboration.

Extended Specimen Lecture Series Videos

Forest Urban Live Invertebrates Collections Manager

NHMLAC Discovery Talk with Forest Urban

Join Forest Urban, Manager of Invertebrate Living Collections, as he goes behind-the-scenes of NHM’s Insectary, explores the new Bugtopia exhibit, and shares what he and his team has been up to during the museum's temporary closure.

Happy Hour with Dr. Regan Dunn

News & Press

Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County’s Dr. Luis Chiappe Co-Authors Paper on Relationship Between Feathered Dinosaurs and Beetles

“Symbiosis between Cretaceous dinosaurs and feather-feeding beetles” published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

The paper looks at amber fragments preserving the remains of feathers from the Early Cretaceous and larvae related to modern feather-feeding beetles in intimate contact

Environmental DNA left behind by ocean animals can be measured to inventory the marine life in a particular area

Burro-ing Into the Past

A new study reveals that introduced donkeys and indigenous pumas are helping to resurrect extinct food webs in Death Valley.

Eating bamboo? It's all in the wrist.

An ancient fossil reveals the earliest panda to survive solely on bamboo and the evolutionary history of panda's false thumbs

Earth’s First Giant

The two-meter skull of a humongous new ichthyosaur species, Earth’s first known giant creature, reveals how both the extinct marine reptiles and modern whales became giants on earth