Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

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The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is the oldest museum in Santa Barbara, California, USA, founded in 1916. The museum is located in scenic Mission Canyon, immediately behind the Santa Barbara Mission. Set in a traditional southern California environment, the museum campus occupies 12 acres (49,000 m²) of beautiful oak woodland along Mission Creek. It is housed in a beautiful mission-style, Spanish Mediterranean complex of buildings considered one of the architectural gems of Santa Barbara.

Blue Whale Skeleton

The museum is renowned for fine dioramas of birds, mammals, and southern California habitats, halls of marine life, geology, and Chumash Indian life, and an exquisite art gallery dedicated to antique natural history prints. It has extensive collections of over 3 million specimens and an active research program with particular strengths in marine biology, terrestrial vertebrates, insects, anthropology, geological mapping, and natural history art. The museum also has an excellent natural history library open to the public.

Exhibits include "Toadally Frogs", explore the fascinating world of frogs and toads! Learn about the beauty, folklore, and natural history of these amazing amphibians in this unique exhibit featuring frogs and toads from around the world.

“Bringing the Condors Home” tells the story of the decline and beginning of recovery of the California Condor, an endangered species. This is the story of human impact on the condor and the determined human efforts to save this magnificent bird from extinction.

The museum’s Gladwin Planetarium was totally renovated in early 2005 and equipped with state of the art technology that transports visitors to distant planets, stars, and galaxies.

Ty Warner Sea Center

The Ty Warner Sea Center, located on Santa Barbara’s historic Stearns Wharf, is a major off-site facility owned and operated by the Museum of Natural History. Opened in April of 2005, the Sea Center offers an exciting and fun hands-on introduction to the mysteries of the Ocean. Among the many interactive exhibits of the Sea Center are a Tide Pool with waves rushing into it every 60 seconds, the Wet Deck featuring direct access to the water below, the Channel Theater, the Workshop, the Whale Karaoke station, and the plastinated dolphin.

External links

[Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History] official website

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