Exhibit Halls
Dynamic Earth
This exhibit hall explores processes such as weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate tectonics that formed – and continue to form – the Earth.
A pre-historic diorama featuring life-size Pteranodon and Albertosaurus models and a realistic construction of an Alabama cave environment add to this hall’s dynamic atmosphere.
Also featured are rocks and mineral specimens from the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, fossils - including the tooth of a 75-foot-long pre-historic shark, and a hurricane ball.
Alabama: Sand to Cedars
Take a hike from Alabama’s mountains to its seashore in this fascinating exhibit hall. Wind your way through limestone ridges, cool forests, wide rivers and steamy swamps.
End your journey at the coast where life clings to wind-swept dunes. See the plants and animals that make Alabama the fourth most biologically diverse state in the country. This hall features a 250-gallon aquarium of indigenous fish and a 12-foot American alligator.
NatureSpace
Discover the natural mysteries of an Alabama backyard and forest in this hands-on discovery room.
Interactive exhibit stations – including computers and microscopes – explore plants, animals, geology, archaeology, and the environment.
Dig for fossils, explore a cave, hear a toad and get a shake from an earthquake!
Attack and Defense
Discover the life and death relationship of predator and prey in this exhibit hall of North American wildlife.
Live snakes and a black widow spider illustrate the unique abilities of animal survival.
Color-coded slashes on exhibit panels define the animals’ chemical, behavioral, or physical response to danger.
Birds of the Americas
The Regar-Werner Ornithology Collection forms the nucleus of this exhibit.
Many of the birds are mounted in natural habitat groupings with painted background dioramas. More than 400 species are represented.
The collection dates from 1860 to the early 1900s making it one of the oldest diorama collections in the United States. Extinct and endangered species, including a passenger pigeon and ivory-billed woodpecker are a focal point of this exhibit.
Environments of Africa
This open-air exhibit hall explores the concept that every animal plays an important role in maintaining the stability of the Earth by adding to or taking from the environment only what it needs to survive.
This hall illustrates how animals adapt and survive in one of nature’s most extreme environments: the African savannah. This hall features an African elephant, a life-sized recreation of a Baobab Tree, and a 9-foot-tall termite mound.
Ancient Egypt
Baboons warm themselves in the rising sun, birds gather on a muddy riverbank, and a tiny beetle pushes a ball of dung across the sand.
These natural rhythms of life led ancient Egyptians to create a belief system that lasted more than 3,000 years.
Discover why these animals were deified, explore 2,300-year-old Ptolemaic Period mummies, and sniff the aromas of mummification in this exhibit hall.
Changing Exhibits Gallery
The Museum fosters a visual arts program in various forms. With the completion of the Changing Exhibits Gallery in 1982, the Museum embarked on a formalized program of temporary exhibitions each year.
The visual arts allow the expressive statements of a human’s relationship to the natural environment. A unique interrelationship exists between natural history and the arts. The Museum strives to explore this connection through a changing exhibit program that supports and complements the central natural history theme of the Museum.
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