Natural History Museum

Explore the Dinosaurs gallery and come face-to-face with an animatronic T-rex

Suitable for

• Any age

Become a scientist in our hands-on education space where you can examine hundreds of real natural history specimens

Suitable for

• Any age

Highlights include a collection of 296 naturally coloured diamonds known as the Aurora Pyramid of Hope, Medusa, a giant, one-of-a-kind emerald from Zambia, and Tissint, a Martian meteorite that landed in Morocco last year

Suitable for

• Any age

Travel through the Cocoon experience deep into the heart of the collections to glimpse the working life of our scientists. See the previously hidden world of scientific research through viewing decks, video, intercom and more than 40 high-tech installations and hands-on interactive activities. Visitors will be able to interact with learning activators stationed throughout Cocoon and discover more about scientific techniques used in labs at Science Focus activity points near the viewing decks

Suitable for

• Any age

Indulge your passion for natural history, botanical illustration and scientific investigation. This permanent gallery showcases highlights from the Museum’s extensive collection of prints, watercolours and oil paintings, alongside intriguing scientific images. The art of India is the theme for this year’s temporary exhibition, which showcases Indian botanical and zoological watercolours commissioned by those working for the British East India Company during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Also on display is a modern response to this work by contemporary Indian artist Sunoj D

Suitable for

• Any age

See 22 of the most valuable and significant items in the Museum’s collection. This cabinet of curiosities includes unique, famous and surprising specimens from the worlds of botany, mineralogy, zoology and palaeontology. Highlights include Charles Darwin’s pigeons, which provided him with the crucial evidence for the theory of evolution by natural selection, and the skull of a Barbary lion, which is thought to have lived in the Tower of London around 1280–1385

Suitable for

• Any age

Travel back in time and experience the dramatic story of prehistoric Britain, its changing landscapes and the people that lived here one million years ago.

Find out how Britain looked long before the Romans, Saxons and Vikings arrived and discover rarely seen specimens from behind the scenes, brought to life using the latest scientific techniques and life-size models.

Incredible finds from sites around Britain will reveal what life was really like one million years ago.

Please note: this exhibition is ticketed. Please purchase tickets in advance. Adults 39.00, Children/Concessions £4.50. Please visit venue's website to book tickets and for information about family concessions.

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

£4.50/£9.00

Website

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/britain-million-years/index.html

Experience the wonder of walking among hundreds of free-flying butterflies this spring when our tropical butterfly house returns to the Natural History Museum. This family-friendly exhibition allows you to wander through a tropical enclosure, discovering the science behind these delicate creatures and their amazing life cycles as they evolve from crawling caterpillars into beautiful butterflies. Book your tickets now to come and see them take flight

Suitable for

• Any age

Enter the amazing world of some of the largest creatures to ever walk the earth. See huge fossils and life-size models of mammoths, and square up to the powerful trunks and tusks of these great beasts.

You’ll even be able to try out life as a mammoth: tusk jousting, trunk moving and feeling the weight of the hundreds of kilogrammes of food a mammoth ate each day – equivalent to about 230 bags of sugar.

The exhibition will take you on an inspiring journey from the time when these titans roamed the land through to today’s research into the causes of mammoth extinction and ways to protect their precious modern relatives, the elephants

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

£5.40-£10 (family ticket £25-£28, free for children under four)

Discover the Rosetta Stone, the Lewis Chessmen and the Parthenon Sculptures, as well as some lesser-known but fascinating objects, with expert guidance that will take you to the heart of the museum's collection. 11.30am and 2pm

Admission

£12

Museums at Night: Ever wondered what happens when the doors close at one of the world’s most famous sites dedicated to natural history? Now you can find out for yourself at Dino Snores for Grown Ups, one of the UK’s most extraordinary sleepovers. This unique sleepover offers an unforgettable night of music, art, science and cinema, all in the mysterious setting of the Museum at night.

All you need to enjoy the night is an enquiring mind, a sense of adventure and a sleeping bag, of course.

Suitable for

• 18+

Admission

£175 per person (£160 for Members)

Website

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/after-hours//dino-snores-grown-ups/

Museums at Night: Ever wondered what happens when the doors close at one of the world’s most famous sites dedicated to natural history? Now you can find out for yourself at Dino Snores for Grown Ups, one of the UK’s most extraordinary sleepovers. This unique sleepover offers an unforgettable night of music, art, science and cinema, all in the mysterious setting of the Museum at night.

All you need to enjoy the night is an enquiring mind, a sense of adventure and a sleeping bag, of course.

Suitable for

• 18+
• Not suitable for children

Admission

£175 per person (£160 for Members)

Website

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/after-hours//dino-snores-grown-ups/

For the first time, you can bring a dinosaur and an early human to life before your eyes with the unique, state-of-the-art interactive film Who Do You Think You Really Are?

Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, this film uses screens, webcams and specially designed, hand-held devices to takes you on a virtual journey through your evolutionary past. Extinct creatures appear to roam around in the studio using augmented reality – the blending of computer graphics into real life. Using CGI models developed with the support of the Wellcome Trust, BBC natural history footage and interviews with leading Natural History Museum scientists, the interactive film explores how we have gradually evolved from the earliest life form. Thanks to an innovative partnership with BBC Research & Development, this is the first time augmented reality has been used in a high-profile public space.

Every day at 3.30pm; most weekends at 11am.

Suitable for

• Any age

Discover what really happens at the Museum when the staff and visitors have gone home. Stalk the corridors as night descends, join a torch-lit trail in the Dinosaurs gallery, watch an amazing live show by our scientists and snuggle down at midnight in the shadow of the Diplodocus skeleton in the Museum’s Central Hall. Before the doors open to the public in the morning, ogle owls and marvel at meerkats in a spectacular live animal show with Animal Man, Nick Spellman

Suitable for

• 7-10
• 11-13

Admission

£52. Visit www.nhm.ac.uk/dino-snores. For 7-11-year-olds

Each month, with the help of a Museum scientist, we explore a different object from the new Treasures exhibition. The new Treasures exhibition features 22 of the Museum's most fascinating artefacts. Each month we put a different object in the spotlight and, together with a Museum scientist, explore what makes it such a treasure. See unique, famous and surprising specimens that led to major scientific discoveries as well as some of extraordinary objects that didn't make it on display

Suitable for

• Any age

Join us as we meet a curator and volunteers from the museum to explore how they care for the extraordinary fossil mammals found in London during the Pleistocene, with a live link and footage from behind the scenes

Suitable for

• Any age

Learn how to spot flies and find out about the lifestyles and changing forms they take at different stages in their lives. When you think of flies, maybe the small black creatures buzzing around your picnic come to mind. In fact we have more than 7,000 species of flies in Britain, each looking very different and with unique life cycles. Join us as we meet a Museum curator who will dig out the weirdest and the most beautiful flies from our collection. Come and find out about their lifestyles and the changing forms they take at different stages of their short lives

Suitable for

• Any age