hen the American Museum of Natural History opened to the public on April 6, 1869, a few hundred mounted birds and mammals were on view. Today it is home to vast collections of insects, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, anthropological artifacts, and more fossil mammals and dinosaurs than any other museum in the world. It has over 200 working scientists and welcomes millions of visitors each year.

ounded by a young Harvard graduate named Albert Bickmore, the Museum swiftly outgrew the Arsenal Building in Central Park. On June 2, 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant laid the cornerstone for the Museum's permanent home in what would become known as Museum Park. The site now houses twenty-three buildings, including the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial on Central Park West and the Hayden Planetarium, which will reopen in 2000 as part of the new Rose Center for Earth and Space.

oth within these walls and far, far beyond them, the American Museum of Natural History has pioneered scientific research and discovery, a process characterized by scientists of great vision and nerve. One was Henry Fairfield Osborn, whose fossil hunters raced West in the 1890s.

oy Chapman Andrew's famous Central Asiatic Expeditions found dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert in 1935.

nother legendary museum figure was scientist, explorer, writer, and teacher Margaret Mead, whose dedication to exploring the history of life and what it means to be human exemplifies the Museum's ongoing purpose.