Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
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The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum in Norman, Oklahoma, operated by the University of Oklahoma. It is currently housed in a building on Chautauqua Avenue that opened on May 1, 2000. The museum's exhibits include a Native American gallery and collections of fossils and dinosaur skeletons from Oklahoma and throughout the world. The museum features seven different galleries as well as the interactive, hands-on Discovery Room. With twelve collection divisions and over 6,000,000 items, Sam Noble is one of the world's largest university-based natural history museums. On October 25, 2006 it was announced that the museum got a one million dollar gift to build an orientation gallery and Paleozoic Hall expected to open in Spring 2009 and May 31, 2008.[1]
Among the museum's notable items are:
- The world's largest Apatosaurus skeleton.
- The Cooper Skull, a bison skull, found in 1994, which is "the oldest painted object in North America."[2]
- A Pentaceratops skeleton with a skull 3.1 meters high, the largest known of a land vertebrate. The skull was excavated in 1941, but was not removed from its rock matrix until 1995.[3]
- A number of Mississippian culture stone effigy pipes and other artifacts from the Craig Mound at the Spiro Site.
Gallery
References
- ^ Orientation Gallery Gift
- ^ Bement, Leland C. Bison hunting at Cooper site: where lightning bolts drew thundering herds. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999: 176. ISBN 978-0-8061-3053-8.
- ^ Delayed Debut for Jumbo Dino Skull - 282 (5390): 871 - Science
External links
- Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum
- Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History on TravelOK.com Official travel and tourism website for the State of Oklahoma