The American Museum of Natural History

Our second day in New York started with a visit to the American Museum of Natural History.

The Queensboro Plaza station.

The wall of all of the different classifications of life in the Hall of Biodiversity.

Enormous life size model of a giant jellyfish.

The famous life size blue whale (complete with vaccination band-aid) looming over the Hall of Ocean Life.

Reconstruction of Lucy, one of the earliest human ancestors.

Depictions of some of the oldest European art. A half man, half lion figure above and delicate animal carvings below. Both about 32,000 years old.

Enormous amethyst geode at the entrance of the Hall of Gems and Minerals. This exhibit was recently updated for the museums 150th anniversary and was stunning to see. The color and variety of the stones was just breathtaking. 

Opalized coral.

Rock crystal.

Lovely examples of color variations within tourmalines.

Birthstones according to different calendars.

Moonstones.

Kunzite.

Peridot.

Tourmalines.

Emeralds.

Beautiful examples of raw stones next to their faceted counterparts.

Interesting example of man made stones in their rough and polished forms.

Pearls and corals.

The largest topaz in this picture was so big you would need both hands to hold it.

A vein of lavender jadeite surrounded by other examples of jade.

Examples of the range of color for diamonds.

A piece of calcite displaying is double refraction properties; the ability to take a single ray of light and split it into two rays.

Prickly mesolite with a beautiful slice of azurite malachite in the background. 

Stunning elbaite tourmaline tower.

Giant triangular formation of metallic pyrite.

A golden cluster of fluorite.

An enormous slab of rock from the Gore Mountain mine in New York containing giant garnet crystals.

A close up of a massive piece of stibnite from the Wuling Mine in China weighing almost half a ton.

Examples of the beautifully patterned Blue John fluorite.

Green seraphinite and the characteristic cross patterns of andalusite.

A spectacular piece of calcite and aragonite that resembled a cloud.

Massive columns of beryl.

The Singing Stone, with swirls of blue azurite and green malachite.

The bubble like form of hemimorphite.

A detail of a piece of orbicular granodiorite from Western Australia. It is an ancient part of continental crust that formed around 2.7 billion years ago.

Another astonishing amethyst geode.

A detail of the beautiful cracks and inclusions in an almost 600 pound topaz crystal.

Smokey quartz.

Grape agate.

A piece of metallic meteorite featuring the Widmanstätten pattern; interlocking crystalline structures that form over millions of years of slow cooling.

A metallic meteorite with silicate crystals.

Skeleton of a Buettneria, an animal similar to crocodiles that lived about 225 million years ago.

Adorably tiny pterosaur skeleton next to archaeopteryx, one of the first dinosaurs discovered to have feathers.

A sauropod skeleton that took up multiple rooms.

A model of juvenile Psittacosaurus mongoliensis, the “parrot reptile”.

The Planetarium.