New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
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The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science is a natural history and science museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico near Old Town Albuquerque, founded in 1986.
The Museum's permanent exhibit halls illustrate a "journey through time", covering the birth of the Earth(12 billion years ago) to the Ice Age(10,000 years ago). The seven exhibit halls are as follows: Origins, Age of Super Giants, New Mexico's Seacoast, Age of Volcanos, Evolving Grasslands, Cave, and New Mexico's Ice Age. "Age of Super Giants" features the complete skeletons of Seismosaurus, Saurophaganax, Stegosaurus, and one leg of a Brachiosaurus.
Other permanent exhibits include the "Evolator Time Machine", and two astronomy exhibits as part of the Lodestar Astronomy Center: the Mars Exhibit, which has a full-scale model of the Mars Exploration Rover, and a Planet Exhibit. The statues of two dinosaurs, a Pentaceratops and a Albertosaurus, stand at the entrance. Many dinosaur fossils have been found in New Mexico and a few of the ones on display in the museum are only known from New Mexico.
The museum's newest permanent exhibit, "STARTUP: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution", is dedicated to the history of the personal computer, from the creation of the Altair 8800 to the role that computers play in modern life. The exhibit was conceived in part by Paul Allen, who along with Bill Gates created the Altair BASIC software. Both the Altair 8800 and the Altair BASIC were created in Albuquerque.
The museum is the home to the Lodestar Astronomy Center, a planetarium owned and operated by the University of New Mexico. Lodestar also contains Virtual Voyages, a motion-simulation ride.
The museum also houses changing exhibits, a cafe, gift store, and the Lockheed Martin DynaTheather(a giant screen theater similar to IMAX).
