Housed in Macbride Hall on the northeast Pentacrest, the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History provides vivid glimpses of the world around us. Established in 1858, it serves the academic and public community with exhibits, research collections, and special programs.
Exhibits are broadly representative of the four major divisions of natural science: anthropology, botany, geology, and zoology. For adults and children alike, the Museum provides insight into our living and physical environment and opens doors to new worlds of reality and discovery.
Ground Floor Corridor
The incredible diversity of animal life is depicted in the exhibits on the ground floor corridor. One display coordinates the evolutionary and taxonomic relationships within all major animal groups or phyla. Each group is described in detail in exhibits extending down the corridor, from single celled animals of the phylum Protozoa to mammals of the phylum Vertebrata.
The Museum's bird collection, one of the nation's finest, includes nearly all species recorded as residents or seasonal visitors to Iowa. The exhibits are arranged in taxonomic series as well as in Habitat groups, such as a sandhill crane migration in South Dakota, an Arctic scene on the Bering Sea coast, and autumn in an Iowa woodlot.
Bird Hall Gallery
One of the most significant exhibits in Bird Hall presents extinct or endangered species, including the whooping crane, passenger pigeon, and Carolina parakeet, all of which were once found in Iowa.
A popular exhibit is the Laysan Island Cyclorama. Laysan, in the Hawaiian Islands, was visited by a 1911 University of Iowa expedition which studied the unique avifauna and collected materials for this exhibit. Five of the twenty-three species found on Laysan existed nowhere else in the world. Of these five, three are now extinct.
Mammal Hall Gallery
Mammal Hall exhibits illustrate the biological characteristics and evolutionary diversity of mammals. Specimens represent nearly every mammalian order and family in the world, from the aardvark to the zebra, from the egg-laying platypus to the great apes. Several animals exhibited are now rare, such as the giant panda from China, and the black-footed ferret of the western United States.
Habitat settings include beaver along the Iowa River, a band of antelope on a Wyoming desert plateau, and musk oxen from the Northwest Territories of Canada. Recent additions of habitat dioramas include a Sonoran desert bobcat scene, northern otters, bison on a Kansas prairie, orangutans in a Borneo jungle, and walrus collected by Robert Peary, noted Arctic explorer.
Interpretive exhibits of bones include the complete skeleton of a forty-six foot Atlantic right whale. Additional displays present large and small North American mammals, unique marsupials of Australia, and primates such as lemurs, monkeys and apes.
Iowa Hall Gallery
The Iowa Hall gallery is entered through the columned east portico of Macbride Hall. The lobby, with distinctive turn-of-the-century design, features a museum shop and several exhibits celebrating the works of Iowa's early naturalists.
A dramatic centerpiece exhibit in the main gallery depicts the arrival in Iowa of the first Europeans on the morning of June 17, 1673. In the diorama, two Ioway Indians watch from towering Mississippi River bluffs as the canoes of French explorers Marquette and Joliet appear in the distance.
In the first sequence of exhibits, "Geology of Iowa," the display highlights include a Devonian Age coral reef diorama with reconstructions of life from 380 million years ago, a Pennsylvanian coal swamp rich with the plant life destined to become our fossil fuels, and a life sized model of a giant ground sloth browsing in the cool forests of Iowa's Ice Age. In "Native Cultures of Iowa," exhibits trace human history in Iowa from the hunters of the Ice Age through the settled village farmers of the early historic period. The sequence concludes with a Mesquakie Indian lodge scene of 1845 showing the everyday lifeways of a people in harmony with the environment.
The "Ecology of Iowa" exhibit series is introduced by an audiovisual presentation of Iowa's climate and weather. These large and colorful dioramas present many of the state's plants and animal in Iowa's presettlement forest, marsh, and prairie ecosystems. Other ecological displays focus on soil, landforms, and the influence of modern agriculture.
Programs
Field trips and slide/lecture programs on natural history are scheduled throughout the year. All are open to the public at no charge or at a minimal fee. Contact the Museum at 319-335-048O for a current listing.
Tours
Guided tours of Iowa Hall are available on a drop-in basis or by reservation. Advanced scheduling is required for groups of eight or more. Call 319-335-0480.
Museum Hours: