Hintze Hall

Walk beneath the largest animal on Earth and explore dozens of other exhibits representing 4.5 billion years of natural history.

Hintze Hall is the gateway to our collections and galleries.

Inside it, you can wander among meteorites, mammals, fish, birds, minerals, plants and insects, and hear stories about the people whose work and ideas have shaped the Museum.

'Like the blue whale, these beautiful and intricate objects from nature are like wonderful works of art that showcase the incredible uniqueness and diversity of our natural world.'  -  Lorraine Cornish, Head of Conservation

Star specimens and exhibits

• a 25-metre blue whale skeleton, suspended in the air
• an American mastodon, the elephant’s Ice Age relative
• seaweeds, crucial to marine food chains and habitats, in an intricate underwater-forest arrangement
• a rock as old as the solar system
• an Atlantic blue marlin
• a 122-129-million-year-old Mantellisaurus, one of the most complete dinosaur fossils ever discovered in the UK
• a 120-year-old, 300-kilogramme Turbinaria coral
• fossil trees spanning hundreds of millions of years of the planet's history
• a 2.5-tonne banded iron formation recording the birth of life on Earth