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Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC)

By Bob Strauss, About.com

Name:
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
Address:
10th St. and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC
Phone Number:
202-633-1000
Ticket Prices:
Free
Hours:
10:00 AM to 5:30 PM daily
Web Site:
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
About the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History:

The Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History is comparable in size to New York’s American Museum of Natural History, but less of its floor space is devoted to dinosaurs. Even so, you'll find a considerable number of dinosaur skeletons here--not fabricated reproductions, but actual fossils, including the famous "roadkill" Triceratops that (until the 1990's) was the most complete in the world, the tyrannosaur Gorgosaurus, and the sauropod Diplodocus.

One of the oldest dinosaur museums in the world, the National Museum of Natural History has had to periodically remove its skeletons from display in order to restore or refurbish them (or, in some cases, to completely repose them according to the latest theories of dinosaur physiology). For example, the Triceratops mentioned above has been given a complete facelift, as has the museum's famous Stegosaurus (which has been reoriented so it appears to be reacting to the Allosaurus skeleton directly behind it!)

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