Fossils

Exhibitions

Dinosaur Hall

Step Into Our Award-winning Exhibition, and Enter the Age of Dinosaurs

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Stories

Illustration of a long-legged crocodile-looking reptile looks at a mammal carcass on an ancient tropical islands

How Ancient Crocodile-Like Predators Ruled the Islands of the Caribbean

NHM's scientist discovers that sebicids, ancient land-dwelling crocodile-like beasts, reigned over the West Indies as apex predators after vanishing from South America

Illustration of ice age bird, the teratorn.

Meet Teratorn, the Largest Bird Found at La Brea Tar Pits

The teratorn was undoubtedly big, but was it a big vulture or something else?

Solving a Juniper Seed Mystery at La Brea Tar Pits

How identifying a mysterious fossil seed reveals Ice Age climate change

A paleoart rendition of Eupachydiscus sp. by Cullen Townsend.

Collections Staff Help Ammonites Come Out of Their Shells

Uncovering how digitization and collections management made a groundbreaking extinction study come to life

Closeup of light green skeleton head with neck and top of torso in the background

Meet LA's Gnewest Star: Gnatalie the Green Dino

NHM Commons—the Museum’s new wing and community hub—will welcome visitors this fall with, among other wonders, the newest and biggest fossil Angeleno: Gnatalie.

Walking With Giant Sloths

Take a (virtual) summer road trip to White Sands National Park to explore the fossilized tracks of giant ground sloths

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Scientists hiking a mountainous trail to a cave in the distance.

Gypsum Cave

The holotype skeleton of the extinct aquatic herbivore Neoparadoxia cecilialina from the Monterey Formation of Orange County.

Vertebrate Paleontology

Vertebrate Paleontology is the study of ancient animals that have a vertebral column including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

Project Paleo

Do you want to be a paleontologist? Do you want to be a curator of natural history collections? Project Paleo is your opportunity to work with fossils and contribute to the curation of Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County's collections.

Fossils and Evolution