Museums related to natural history are very popular due to the amount of information they offer on biodiversity, allowing us to admire animals and plants that we would never see otherwise.
The most famous are those of London Y New York, but the City of Mexico He is most interesting and maybe I only took you away from him for a short trip by subway and bus. We invite you to visit the Natural History Museum of Mexico City with this definitive guide.
When was the Museum of Natural History founded and what is its building like?
The Museum of Natural History opened its doors on October 24, 1964, in the midst of the wave of furor for museums in the 1960s, from which also emerged the National Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of the Viceroyalty and other Mexican cultural institutions.
The Natural History Museum is located in the Second Section of the Chapultepec Forest and has an area of 7,500 m2 of exhibition, distributed in an architectural complex formed by domed hemispherical structures.
The building also has a lobby in which there are specimens on display and green areas that are used for environmental activities and scientific dissemination.
Currently the museum is attached to the General Directorate of Urban Forests and Environmental Education of the Ministry of the Environment of the Federal District Government.
How is the sample book of the Museum of Natural History organized?
The museum exhibition is structured in 7 rooms or permanent exhibition spaces: Universe, Classification of living beings, Adaptation to the aquatic environment; Evolution of living beings; Human evolution, a look at our origins; Biogeography, movement and evolution of life; and the Diego Rivera mural, Water, origin of life, located in the Cárcamo de Dolores, an annex building belonging to the museum.
The museum's heritage of specimens is made up of two types of collections: Exhibition Collection and Scientific Collection of Insects.
The specimens of the first collection are exhibited in the different exhibition rooms, while most of the collection of insects is in safekeeping, with restricted access.
What can I see in the room referring to the Universe?
This module takes a tour of the conformation of the universe, from the origin of the Solar System with its Sun, planets, satellites and other celestial bodies, to the formation of larger areas, such as galaxies.
In this room a piece of the Allende meteorite is preserved, a fireball that fell disintegrated into fragments on February 8, 1969 near the Chihuahuan population of the same name, although several parts were recovered.
The Allende meteorite was formed 4.568 million years ago, simultaneously with the Solar System, so when you see the 20-centimeter piece that the museum exhibits, you will be admiring perhaps the oldest item that passes your eyes.
Another interesting space in the module dedicated to the Universe is dedicated to the issue of global warming, which is highly relevant for the survival of species, including humans.
Visitors here receive vital information to have an environmental behavior, which allows to reverse the threat of global warming.
What does the Classification of living beings module offer?
This thematic module has been designed based on the evolutionary theory of the formation of the thousands of species that live on Earth.
From the earliest known antiquity, man was curious to classify animals and plants.
One of the first thinkers to approach the subject was the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who made his classifications of living beings based on their anatomical characteristics.
It was Aristotle who made the first differentiation between oviparous and viviparous animals, although he was not very correct when he stated that the organ of intelligence was the heart and that the function of the brain was to prevent the heart from overheating.
Then there were other notable classifiers of living beings, until the most important of all appeared, the Swedish Carl von Linnaeus, who created in the 18th century the binomial nomenclature for species (one name for the genus and another for the species) that we learned in high school and that it is still used.
Then, in the 19th century, Taxonomy, which is the science that deals with the classification of species, was enriched by the contributions of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
Finally, after the irruption of genetics at the end of the 20th century, it is the genes that we share or stop sharing, which establish the differences between species, showing that the simplest and most complex beings share common genes and ancestors .
The Classification of Living Things room at the Museum of Natural History offers a fascinating journey through these scientific aspects of life on Earth.
What is the interest of the room Adaptation to the aquatic environment?
We live on the planet of water, life arose in water and it is still curious that the maximum evolutionary expression on Earth, man, cannot live in an aquatic environment, at least not for long.
The oceans and other bodies of water cover almost 362 million km2, which represents more than 70% of the total planetary surface.
Apart from the seas, our planet has lakes, lagoons and other aquatic spaces where life bustles.
Currently, out of every 100 liters of water on Earth, 97 are salt water and 3 are fresh water. Of the 3 fresh water, 2 are frozen in thick layers of ice, mainly in Antarctica, and just one liter corresponds to rivers, lakes and other sources from which we supply ourselves with the vital liquid.
Life in water requires special characteristics. Fish learned to capture dissolved oxygen in water and have a hydrodynamic body that allows them to move in a fluid environment.
The webbed legs of webbed birds, such as ducks, geese, and geese, are used to propel themselves over water surfaces. Marine mammals, such as the whale and dolphin, developed fins for swimming.
The fight against global warming and the protection of water sources is not only to preserve what man needs to live, but also to conserve the valuable ecosystems full of fascinating species that we feed on.
These are some of the lessons left by the room for Adaptation to the aquatic environment of the Natural History Museum of Mexico City.
What's in the Evolution of Living Things room?
At some point in the past, our ancestors were forced to walk, why? One of the hypotheses of science postulates that bipedalism arose to be able to see over the grasslands in search of prey.
This room of the Natural History Museum shows the characteristics that have allowed species of fauna and flora to adapt and thrive in certain physical environments.
Thanks to fossils, scientists know in what kinds of environments species lived in the past, what they fed on, who were their predators and if certain territories were under the sea millions of years ago.
The Evolution of Living Things module shows the development of life through geological ages, as well as the great changes, including mass extinctions, that have occurred to shape planetary biodiversity.
In this room is the specimen that symbolizes the museum, a replica of Diplodocus carnegii, a dinosaur that lived in North America about 150 million years ago, during the Upper Jurassic.
What is the importance of the Human evolution space, a look at our origins?
This permanent exhibit at the Museum of Natural History deals specifically with the evolution of man.
It tries to answer questions such as when and where the human species arose, from which other species we derived, with which we share a piece of history, and what is our relationship with the higher mammals that are our most immediate relatives.
The exhibition is presented in 5 thematic axes: Yo primate, Yo ape, Yo hominino, Yo Homo and Yo sapiens.
We tend to use the terms "primate" and "ape" as if they were the same thing. Apes are the large primates that do not have a tail, such as the chimpanzee, orangutan, gorilla, and man.
Hominins are primates with upright posture and bipedal locomotion. Homo is the genus of species considered human; that is, us and our closest evolutionary relatives. Sapiens (Sage) is just us, not without a certain petulance.
In any case, we are part of a big family and this module of the Museum of Natural History explains human evolution, trying to answer the most frequently asked questions on the subject.
What does the Biogeography, Movement and Evolution of Life module teach?
Why is it possible to find fossils of similar species in Europe and in North America? Because animals make great migrations and many natives of the old continent made the trip to North America through the Bering Strait.
Why are identical fossils found in Africa and South America? Because millions of years ago, both territories were united.
Biogeography is an interdisciplinary science between Biology and Geography, which is responsible for studying the distribution patterns of flora and fauna in space and through time.
Why can a species live in one habitat and not another? Why is biodiversity richer in tropical regions?
The Biogeography, movement and evolution of life module of the Museum of Natural History answers these questions, with the support of a large number of species on display and dioramas representative of the main regions of the planet.
What is El Cárcamo de Dolores?
The Cárcamo de Dolores is a building belonging to the Museum of Natural History, located, like this one, in the Second Section of the Chapultepec Forest. It was built in 1951 to commemorate the completion of the Lerma System, an important work for the supply of water to Mexico City.
The Cárcamo de Dolores has several attractions for visitors, such as the mural by Diego Rivera Water, origin of life; the Lambdoma Chamber, a sound realization by Ariel Guzik that evokes the presence of water; and the Fuente de Tláloc, also the work of Rivera.
For the artistic execution of the mural, Rivera relied on the theory of the Russian biologist Aleksandr Oparin about the origin of life.
In the mid-20th century, Oparin postulated that life originated in water, after inorganic matter evolved to become organic, with the first cells emerging.
The mural shows some of the most representative species of the evolution of life, such as the trilobite, which was the first animal with complex eyes; and cooksonia, a plant believed to be the first to grow on land.
What are the most interesting specimens in the collection on display?
Apart from the fossil replica of Diplodocus carnegii, 25 meters long, on their way through the rooms visitors admire an infinity of species, from the most biologically simple to the most complex.
Due to their origin, the exhibited species are divided into four categories: Geological, referring to specimens of soils, rocks and minerals; Paleontological, formed by fossils; that of Herbarium, made up of algae, plants and fungi; and that of Zoology, which includes vertebrate and invertebrate animals.
Visitors are kindly greeted in the museum lobby by an impressive 3 meter tall polar bear standing upright.
The argonaut and the crystal jellyfish are two pieces from the 19th century that come from the old Poplar Museum, also from the field of natural history.
Other specimens with evolutionary imprint and impressive taxidermies are the platypus, one of the oldest animals still living; the elk, the largest member of the deer family; and the Turtle of the Galapagos, among the largest in the world.
There is also the Teporingo or Bunny of the volcanoes, an extraordinarily rare and endemic species of the volcanic area that surrounds the Valley of Mexico, and which is the smallest rabbit in the country.
Likewise, the jaguar, the largest feline in America, are present; the Kiwi, a bird that lost the ability to fly because before the arrival of man, it had no predators on its New Zealand island of origin; and the Asian Elephant, one of the two currently existing species of elephants.
We finish this walk through the collection on display at the Museum of Natural History with the American Beaver, the largest rodent in North America; the Snow Leopard, a very rare animal of which very few specimens remain; and the huge jaw of Carcharodon megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived.
What is the usefulness of the Scientific Collection of Insects?
This collection of about 55,000 specimens is made up of butterflies (40%), beetles (40%) and other groups of insects (20%).
The first specimens in the collection were donated by individuals, especially from the scientific world, and later it has been enlarged with the museum's own field research projects, such as the registry of the butterflies that live in the Chapultepec Forest.
The collection was conceived as an entomological information bank for scientific research, which is why it is kept in warehouses, being consulted by specialists and students. In the museum lobby there is a small sample of the institution's collection of insects.
Does the museum hold temporary exhibits?
Regularly, the Museum of Natural History holds temporary exhibitions to provide the public with information and entertainment tours on specific topics of natural history
Among the temporary exhibitions that have been presented are “Ventus. Wind, movement and life ”,“ Skeletons. Evolution in motion "," Sharks, mantas and rays. Sentinels of the ocean ”, and“ Unusual animals ”.
Other attractive and instructive transitory samples have been "Astronomical observatories, points of connection of the Earth with the rest of the Universe", "Noah's Ark", "Auroras, more than a light show" and "Stone, skin, paper and pixel ”.
What are the hours, prices and other information of interest?
The Natural History Museum is located in the Correr es Salud Circuit in the Second Section of the Chapultepec Forest.
The museum is open to the public between Tuesday and Sunday, from 10 AM to 5 PM. General admission is 20 pesos, with a reduced rate of 10 pesos for students and teachers with valid credentials, seniors and people belonging to vulnerable groups.
To get to the museum by public transport through the Chapultepec metro station, you have to take route 24 for buses and combis. By the Constituyentes metro, the route to take is 47, which leaves you in front of the museum.
Does the Museum of Natural History carry out ecological activities outdoors?
The museum organizes environmental activities in the Chapultepec Forest, the purpose of which is to bring human beings closer to nature and promote environmentally friendly behavior among citizens.
Among these is the Tree Monitoring activity, carried out taking advantage of the rich biodiversity of flora found in the Chapultepec Forest. In this program the participants make an approach with nature, while doing an instructive ecological tour.
The Tree Monitoring program accepts participants from the age of 10 and takes place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after prior appointment and for groups of at least 5 people. It costs $ 6, plus the entrance ticket to the museum.
Another environmental program is Participatory Bird Monitoring. This activity is open to people over 15 years of age in groups of about 10 people and is free. It takes place on Fridays between 8 AM and 10:30 AM, over a 4 km route in the Second Section of the Chapultepec Forest.
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