Yale Peabody Museum

Peabody Museum of Natural History

The exterior of the Peabody Museum
New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Established	1866
Location	New Haven, Connecticut
Coordinates	41°19′03″N 72°55′12″W / 41.317538°N 72.919863°W / 41.317538; -72.919863
Type	Natural History
Director	David Skelly (as of July 2014)
Website	http://peabody.yale.edu/

The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is among the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It was founded by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 at the behest of his nephew Othniel Charles Marsh, the early paleontologist. Most known to the public for its Great Hall of Dinosaurs, which includes a mounted juvenile Brontosaurus and the 110-foot (34 m) long mural, The Age of Reptiles; it also has permanent exhibits dedicated to human and mammal evolution; wildlife dioramas, Egyptian artifacts; and the birds, minerals and Native Americans of Connecticut.

The Peabody Museum is located at 170 Whitney Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, and is run by almost one hundred staff members. While the original building was demolished in 1917, it moved to its current location in 1925, and has since expanded to occupy the Peabody Museum, the attached Kline Geology Laboratory and the Class of 1954 Environmental Sciences Center, parts of three additional buildings, and a field station at the Long Island Sound. The museum also owns Horse Island in the Thimble Islands, which is not opened to the public, but used for experiments. Space is used for storage, work, and classrooms. The Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center, completed in 2001 and connected to the museum and the adjacent Kline Geology Laboratory, hosts approximately one-half of the museum's 12 million specimens.