North Carolina Museum of Life and Science
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The North Carolina Museum of Life and Science (NCMLS, formerly the NC Children's Museum) is a science museum located in Durham, North Carolina, USA, featuring an array of largely hands-on exhibits intended to illustrate concepts of natural science.
The museum exists on some 80 acres bisected by Murray Avenue. The main facility is located on the north tract, along with the Butterfly House, Farmyard, Caterpillar Cafe, Train, and new exhibits under construction. The southern tract is now largely devoted to parking and administrative buildings, although prior to the construction of the new main building in the early 1990s, these structures contained the bulk of the museum's exhibit space.
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[edit] Exhibits
[edit] Aerospace
NCMLS has historically been most notable for its Aerospace exhibit, which focuses on the early NASA space program. Most of the artifacts on display are on long-term loan from the National Air and Space Museum. Many of these are significant Project Apollo-related artifacts, such as a moon rock, Neil Armstrong's dosimeter, an Apollo Command Module test vehicle, a portion of a lunar rover, and a full-sized mock-up of a Lunar Module. NCMLS came into possession of these artifacts through the influence of James E. Webb, the second NASA administrator and a native of North Carolina.
[edit] Butterfly House
A major attraction at NCMLS is its more recently-opened three-story glass Butterfly House (see Butterfly Zoo), a greenhouse featuring a community of several hundred tropical butterflies representing dozens of species, as well as an array of tropical plants.
[edit] Explore the Wild
Explore the Wild is home to American black bears, red wolves, and lemurs. It features a 750-foot boardwalk over a preserved 6-acre natural space, plus many multimedia exhibits. The exhibit opened in May, 2006.
[edit] Dinosaur Trail
Long a local favorite, the Prehistoric Trail featured a number of life-size plaster amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs set along a woodland path. Perhaps most notable was the Brontosaurus, still visible today from Murray Avenue. According to a 1965 pamphlet, the trail's original lineup featured a Seymouria, an Eryops, a Dimetrodon, an Araeoscelis, a Saltoposuchus, a Yaleosaurus, a Plateosaurus, and a Camptosaurus. Later additions included a T-Rex and a Triceratops. The trail also provided models of a mammoth and a rhinoceros for scale. The creatures were built by museum staff over a four-year period, culminating with the exhibit's completion in 1967. It was renamed the Dinosaur Trail in 1986. While most of the models still exist, the trail was rendered largely impassable by Hurricane Fran in 1996 and has since fallen into disrepair. A brand new dinosaur trail (located in a different area on the museum's grounds) is scheduled to open in 2008.
