The San Diego Natural History Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums in the world devoted to natural history. It is located in Balboa Park, San Diego, California, USA. The museum has an extensive collection of more than 3 million specimens and artifacts, representing 5 billion years of Earth’s history. The museum is a center for research and education on the natural sciences, with more than 100 scientists working onsite. It also houses one of the largest libraries of its kind in the world, with over 250,000 volumes.
The San Diego Natural History Museum was founded in 1874 by Dr. George W. Heald and Dr. Amos Gorton as the San Diego Society of Natural History. It was originally housed in a small wooden building on Sixth Avenue between E and F Streets (now Broadway) in downtown San Diego. In 1882, the society moved to a larger building on Eighth Avenue between C and D Streets (now 8th Avenue). This building served as the society’s headquarters until 1915, when it relocated to Balboa Park. The current museum building was completed in 1933 as part of the park’s Panama-California Exposition celebration; it has been expanded several times since then to accommodate the growing collections and changing needs of the museum.
The museum’s collections represent all major taxonomic groups from around the world, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, invertebrates , ichthyosaurs , dinosaurs , plants , minerals , meteorites , fossils , shells , and corals . The library contains over 250,000 books , journals , reports , maps , microfilms , photographs , slides , CDs/DVDs & other materials relating to natural history . In addition to its public exhibits & programs,.the museum offers educational opportunities for students & teachers at all levels . Research conducted at the museum is varied & multi-disciplinary; recent projects have included studies on global climate change impacts on local ecosystems ; DNA barcoding of species ; & urban ecology .