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About the Academy of Natural Sciences:
As is the case with many natural history museums, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia greets visitors with a prehistoric bang: a 42-foot-long skeleton of Giganotosaurus (one of the largest predators that ever lived) at the head of Dinosaur Hall. Further along in the museum are skeletons of 30 more dinosaurs, including Deinonychus, Chasmosaurus, and Corythosaurus. This hall also features dinosaur eggs and footprints, various sculptures and murals, and a "Big Dig" where kids can hunt for fossils.
Though it's far from the the most spectacular dinosaur at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Hadrosaurus is one of the most important, historically speaking. This duck-billed dinosaur was discovered in New Jersey in 1858 by the famous paleontologist Joseph Leidy, who two years before (under the Academy's sponsorship) had been the first person to discover dinosaur fossils in North America. Besides lending its name to hadrosaurs in general, Hadrosaurus provided the first indisputable evidence that dinosaurs were capable of walking on two legs.
