Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Natural history museum in Cleveland's University Circle, United States.
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum in University Circle, a neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. It houses fossils, minerals, preserved animals, and archaeological objects arranged across several galleries, each focused on a different scientific area.
The museum was founded in 1920 and gradually grew into a research center with broad scientific collections. New galleries and scientific departments were added over the following decades, deepening the focus on the natural history of northeastern Ohio.
The museum sits in University Circle, a part of Cleveland where schools, museums, and research centers stand close together. Visitors often come here as part of a broader day in this area, moving between exhibits on local wildlife, rocks, and early human presence in the region.
Allow several hours for a visit, as the galleries cover a wide range of topics and there is a lot to see. The building is accessible to visitors with mobility needs, and guided programs are sometimes available for groups.
The museum holds one of the most complete skulls of Dunkleosteus terrelli, an armored fish from the Devonian period found in local shale deposits in what is now Ohio. This fish had no teeth in the usual sense, but bony blades that could snap shut with considerable force.
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