{"id":1486,"date":"2011-03-23T23:16:50","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T04:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/?p=1486"},"modified":"2011-03-24T08:07:42","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T13:07:42","slug":"a-day-at-the-natural-history-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/a-day-at-the-natural-history-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"A Day at the Natural History Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weekends ago Preston and I spent a nice Saturday (March 12) at the Natural History Museum, in Washington, DC.<\/a> This was the first time I had been since the new “Hall of Human Origins” was opened, and we spent a good bit of time in there. Preston loved all the skeletons\/skulls. And of course, he loved the dinosaur exhibits – which hadn’t changed much since last time we were there (~2 years ago). He kept going from exhibit to exhibit: “what is this one? And this one?…” until it felt like I had read every caption in the museum. But he was very happy. Naturally, we had to stop and watch every video\/movie presented in the various exhibits.<\/p>\n

\"Natural<\/a><\/p>\n

I did like the Hall of Human Origins<\/a>; they have a neat entrance tunnel that portrays in a repeating video-mural the evolution of Homo Sapiens from earlier hominids. And the models of the various species of hominids are very life-like. I especially liked seeing a model of Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis<\/a>) as I had only previously seen (castings) of the (partial) skeleton. And I swear I’ve seen some specimens of Homo neanderthalensis<\/a> walking among us; that model was particularly enlightening. Pictures of both are below.<\/p>\n

This museum isn’t as hands-on as, say, the Baltimore Science Museum, but it still has enough to keep the interest of a 4-year old for most of a Saturday! Afterward we had a bite to eat at the restaurant out by the (temporary during winter) skating rink in the Sculpture gardens. Great way to end the day! <\/p>\n

Click any of the images for a larger-size and slideshow. Enjoy!<\/p>\n


\n\"Entrance<\/a>
\n\"Lucy<\/a>
\n\"Hall<\/a>
\n\"Hall<\/a>
\n\"Hall<\/a>
\n\"Homo<\/a>
\n\"Hall<\/a>
\n\"Hall<\/a>
\n\"Natural<\/a>
\n\"Great<\/a>
\n\"Watching<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weekends ago Preston and I spent a nice Saturday (March 12) at the Natural History Museum, in Washington, DC. This was the first time I had been since the new “Hall of Human Origins” was opened, and we spent a good bit of time in there. Preston loved all the skeletons\/skulls. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,18,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}