The Canadian Museum of Nature is probably one of the most interesting museums in Ottawa. With a unique collection of animate and inanimate nature exhibits, it attracts plenty of biology, natural history and nature lovers from all over the world. The museum has interactive labs demonstrating many technological processes. For example, you can learn the process of oil extraction or even simulate a volcanic eruption on your own.

The first visitors saw the exhibition of the Museum of Nature on July 1, 1900. But the history of the museum began a little earlier in 1856 when the Geological Society of Canada started expanding the main collection of rocks and minerals. This collection became the basis of the museum exposition. In 1881, the museum moved from Montreal to Ottawa, but it turned out there was not enough space. The new building was opened to visitors only in 1912.

It should be mentioned that the collection of the Canadian Museum of Nature is very extensive and includes more than seven thousand samples. Besides, two of them are samples of precious stones. The collection of fossils is also large: fossils of vertebrate reptiles, dinosaurs, fish, mollusks, plants. It is rightfully considered the best of its kind in Canada. Besides these exhibits, the museum displays a zoological collection and the National Herbarium of Canada containing about sixty thousand different plant samples.

The museum is divided into theme zones for visitors’ convenience. The underground floor is a greenhouse named Solarium. Here you can see flying dinosaurs, visit the presentation lab and 3D cinema.
Temporary exhibitions and events, the Fossils Gallery and a cafeteria are on the first floor. On the second one, there are the Water Gallery, the Mammal Gallery of Canada and the Queens’ Lantern. Minerals occupy the third floor, and the fourth is given to the Bird Gallery, Animalium (insects, etc.), an exhibition hall and a play area for kids.

The museum has a library and archive of the Natural Heritage Campus. They contain over 35,000 books on natural sciences, papers on the history of the museum, scientific researches on nature.