I emerged from the Tube in the Museum's East Garden, where I discovered they were holding an outdoor exhibition, "Earth from the Air", by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. This collection of 150 images taken from airplanes over 100 countries was captivating. The pictures ranged from glaciers to shantytowns, the World Trade Center before it fell to rice paddies. Interspersed with the stunning images were various ecological statistics. All in all, it was a very powerful presentation. (Not that I'm a tree-hugger, but I do try to maintain a certain level of ecological consciousness.)

From there I got a shot of the profile of the museum, then headed inside. There I was greeted by what one would expect in such a museum: a dinosaur (Diplodocus) skeleton. I grabbed a map and wandered around the main lobby while waiting for the next tour to start up. There were some interesting things there, including a very large and complex gold crystal, a dodo skeleton, and the fossilized remains of a Glyptodont, a distant Pleistocene relative of the armadillo.

The tour started off by going through the favorite section, the dinosaurs. I got in a pic of a Triceratops, one of my favorite dinosaurs. I also got shots of Baryonyx ( wide and closeup ), the pride of the Museum's dinosaur collection. It was discovered practically on Museum grounds in 1983, and is the most complete skeleton of a carnivorous dinosaur found in the 20th century. It was unusual for a large meat-eating dinosaur, in that it had a long crocodile-like skull and powerful arms with sharp talons.

From there we headed into the mammals section. Naturally I had to get a picture of my most favorite of animals, the wombat, as well as one of a skeleton of a Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever, which roamed Australia 30,000 years ago. Further along in the mammals was the whale room, which houses one of the Museum's most famous items: a life-sized model of a blue whale. It also contained a few skeletons of other whales, including that of the Bowhead whale, which has the longest jaws of any whale species.

That section naturally led into the fish and marine reptiles section. Here they had some more fossils, that of the Ichthyosaur and Rhomaleosaurus.

We then headed on through the bird section, where they had an 18th-century hummingbird case. According to our guide, these cases were very popular decorations in Victorian London. He also said that he'd never actually succeeded in counting how many birds are in it, but estimated that it's about 500 or so.

The tour wrapped up in the Earth Galleries of the museum, right below the globe escalator. I wandered around there a little, checking out some of the displays on volcanoes and earthquakes. They have a Kobe Earthquake simulator, set up to look like a Japanese grocery store. Further upstairs, they have a gallery of Earth's treasures, including:
topazes
amethysts
some very fine crystals
a rainbow of gems

I grabbed a light snack at the food court in the Earth Galleries, and started out. I couldn't quite leave, however, without a little jaunt into the first phase of the Darwin Centre, the museum's new biological laboratory and storage facility. It houses the museum's Spirit Collection - animal and vegetable specimens preserved in alcohol. The lobby of the Centre contains a selection from the collection, and I got a picture of containers holding a rat and a bat.