Exploring the Connections Among All Living Things
Located on the west side of the building, the Museum’s new Evolving Life wing will highlight the systems that govern life on Earth and explore how life changes over time. As you enter the gallery, you will encounter a question: Are we part of nature? Subsequent learning stations will demonstrate how organisms rely on each other, influence each other, and adapt to changing environments—together.
Throughout the wing, specimens will be strategically positioned as the evidence scientists use to answer fundamental questions about how the world works. We will ask questions of visitors and prompt you to ask your own, all in a framework of scientific inquiry that encourages critical thinking and the recognition that science is about asking and answering questions.
Visitor Takeaways
Exhibits will be organized around core stories, or case studies, that illuminate our scientific understanding of the ways in which life is connected, how it changes, and the processes that govern that change.
By exploring these case studies, you will discover how:
The wing will be structured around five distinct areas:
Are We Part of Nature?
You will first encounter a reconstructed ice-age scene featuring key Museum specimens, including a mammoth and Smilodon (saber-toothed cat). A series of stone tools from our archaeology collection will illustrate how humans were and are part of their ecosystems.
How Is Life Connected?
A diorama-style gallery will feature some of the Museum’s most compelling specimens, and a media overlay will build connections among those specimens. We will introduce you to four distinct regional habitats and demonstrate how organisms are interdependent.
How Do Living Things Change?
This area will provide evidence for evolution through themed stories that illustrate fundamental evolutionary patterns. Using an inquiry-based learning approach, the material will encourage you to think like a scientist and invite you to explore the “why.”
Scales of Adaptation: Adapt or Perish
As a key aspect of evolution, adaptations allow species to specialize to unique or extreme environments—sometimes in eye-catching ways. This area will explore different factors and scales of environmental influence that lead to species changes, diversification, or convergent life strategies.
What About Us?
Designed to build upon all the content that precedes it, this section will drive home the mission of the Museum and our objectives in pioneering a new approach to presenting natural history. A little less than half of the gallery space will be devoted to an extended case study focused on our branch of the evolutionary tree and the impact of various environmental changes on human health.
