The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum located approximately five miles (8 km) east of downtown Cleveland, Ohio in University Circle, a 550-acre (220 ha) concentration of educational, cultural and medical institutions. The museum was established in 1920 to perform research, education and development of collections in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, botany, geology, paleontology, wildlife biology, and zoology.
Donald Johanson was the curator of the museum when he discovered "Lucy," the skeletal remains of the ancient hominid Australopithecus afarensis. The current Curator and Head of the Physical Anthropology Department is Yohannes Haile-Selassie.
Exhibits[]
The museum's cast of Lucy.
Museum collections total more than four million specimens and include specimens of paleontology, zoology, archaeology, minerology, ornithology, and a variety of other scientific subjects.
The museum has made many discoveries over the years. Recently, in vertebrate paleontology, both the remains of a Titanicthis in Ohio and a new ceratopsian, Albertaceratops nesmoi have been made. Both are expected to go on display eventually.
