Beaty Biodiversity Museum, UBC Campus, Vancouver

Visitors to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum as the University of British Columbia Campus in Vancouver can visit the breathtaking Djavad Mowafaghian Atrium which houses the 80 foot blue whale skeleton which is the Museum's star attraction. CREDIT: Venture Vancouver, SOURCE: www.venturevancouver.com

With over 20,000 square feet of museum space, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum offers visitors a unique learning experience in Vancouver's University of British Columbia Campus.

STATS

HOURS

RATES

Type:

Museum

Season:

All Seasons

Weather:

All Weather

Time:

3 hours

Cost:

What to bring:

Camera, Questions, Sense of Curiosity

Opened in 2010, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is one of the University of British Columbia's most interesting attractions. Encompassing several collections, the museum is a celebration of the earth's biodiversity with over 20,000 square feet of exhibits ranging from flora and fauna to fossils to bugs to shells to stuffed birds and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum's star exhibit, the 80 foot blue whale skeleton displayed in the glass atrium. Come see the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC's Point Grey campus!

Located on Vancouver's University of British Columbia Campus, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum encompasses over 20,000 square feet of exhibits, a teaching lab and an auditorium. The museum offers a unique look into UBC's extensive collections and celebrates global biodiversity (the Museum debuted a series of previews starting on the International Day for Biological Diversity on May 22, 2010) with dozens of exhibits ranging from flora and fauna to fossils and to its flagship exhibit, the skeleton of a Blue Whale.

The biggest exhibit at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is its 26 metre long (80 foot) Blue Whale skeleton which hangs suspended in the museum's glass and concrete atrium. In 1987, a mature female Blue Whale body washed ashore on the eastern Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. The remains were buried to allow time for the whale to decompose in order to preserve the rare skeleton for future exhibition - twenty years later, in 2007, UBC was granted permission to unearth the whale and spent months peeling away the remaining blubber and skin, degreasing the bones (to ensure they didn't smell!), performing repairs (parts of the skull were damaged from the Whale's collision with a boat) and finally, putting this gigantic puzzle piece back together. In spring of 2010, the skeleton arrived at its new home at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in the Djavad Mowafaghian Atrium and has the distinction of being one of only a handful of Blue Whale skeletons on public display in the world.

The scope of the Museum's collections ranges over millions of years of evolution. The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is home to a number of collections including:

the Herbarium (which contains half a million plant specimens from around the world),
the Spencer Entomological Collection (containing over 600,000 specimens of insects and terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates),
the Marine Invertebrate Collection (which features thousands of mollusk shells from around the world),
the Cowan Vertebrate Collection (over 40,000 specimens of mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles),
the Fish Museum (which contains over 800,000 preserved fish, skeletons, fossils, x-rays and DNA samples) and,
the Fossil Collection (containing over 20,000 fossils of from all over the world)

Don't miss the opportunity to take a peek into the natural world through this extensive collections from around the globe at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver, British Columbia!