The American Museum of Natural History, like The Met, is so large it takes more than a day to see.  Here is a somewhat random selection of exhibits from our second visit.  Above we have elks …

… and these are Mountain Goats.  Just a couple of the many large three-dimensional dioramas, quite impressive in themselves though with a slightly archaic nineteenth century ethos to them.

This is an opalised ammonite shell from Alberta (inland western Canada).  It is from 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were about to evaporate and Alberta was under the sea.

This is a full scale replica of the Aztec Stone of the Sun.  It is twelve feet in circumference and the original weighs over twenty tons.  In the centre is the sun god Tonatiuh.

A Mayan sculptural facade from the “nunnery” quadrangal at Uxmal in the Yucatan.  Removed in 1840.

A model of The Castillo at Chichen Itza, in cutaway style to show an earlier building buried within, in a Mayan equivalent of Russian dolls.

A model of Temple IV at Tikal.  The original is the highest of all Mayan buildings at 212 feet.

A model of another Mayan building, the Rio Bec B temple.  It in in deep jungle in the Campeche province of Mexico, around 80 kilometres north of Tikal.  There is an interesting account of a visit there here.

An American Indian headdress from the Amazon.

2 November 2011.