The Harvard Museum of Natural History opened an exhibition called "Collecting Wonders: Tomorrow's Discoveries" on June 27, 2026, featuring rare and historic specimens from its collection of over 26 million objects. Among the highlights are a dodo skeleton last displayed nearly two decades ago, an extinct golden toad, and a 300-million-year-old fern that represents the prehistoric origins of coal. The exhibition runs through April 2027 and includes other unique items like George Washington's pheasants and a blue morpho butterfly with rare wing markings.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-09-30,
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Story summary
The Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts opened an exhibition called 'Collecting Wonders: Tomorrow's Discoveries' on June 27, 2026, which will run through April 2027. The exhibition features rare and ancient specimens from the museum’s vast collection of over 26 million individual objects, including a dodo skeleton and a 300-million-year-old fern. This showcase is a collaboration between the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture and three research museums at Harvard University: the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum. The exhibit highlights how scientists continue to use these historical collections for ongoing studies of life on Earth.
Written for “Harvard Museum Extinction Exhibit” on 2026-10-05,
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Most visitors to a natural history museum see only a sliver of what it holds.
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At the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the objects on display are a tiny percentage of the total collection, with experts caring behind the scenes for 26 million specimens.
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experts → care → specimens
A new exhibition called ‘Collecting Wonders: Tomorrow's Discoveries,’ brings some of the rarest, oldest and most beautiful of them into public view, many for the first time.
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exhibition → call → time
From a dodo skeleton to jewel-like beetles, the objects span billions of years and show how scientists still use these old collections to study life on Earth.
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scientists → span → Earth
What the exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History shows and when you can visit
The exhibition, ‘Collecting Wonders: Tomorrow's Discoveries’ opened on 27 June 2026 and runs through April 2027 in the museum's main gallery space.
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The show draws on a collection of more than 26 million individual objects, and the Harvard Gazette reports that it is open daily from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon.
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Specimens range from stone and bone to plant, animal, feather, fish and fossil, from a massive polar bear to tiny beetles.
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The dodo skeleton, the extinct golden toad and a 300-million-year-old fern at Harvard
Several specimens no longer exist in the wild.
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The dodo, whose last widely accepted sighting was in 1662, appears as a whole articulated skeleton; it was last displayed nearly twenty years ago, alongside a feathered model.
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Visitors can also see the golden toad, discovered in 1964 in Costa Rica's Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve and declared extinct in 2004.
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Ornithology collection manager Jeremiah Trimble explains that such specimens preserve a snapshot of a species and its location, letting researchers trace how its genetics changed over time.
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genetics → explain → time
A 300-million-year-old fern tells another story, ferns and other prehistoric plants were buried and pressed over millions of years into the coal that fuelled the Industrial Revolution.
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that → tell → Revolution
Some objects arrive with extraordinary stories.
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George Washington's golden pheasants once lived in the aviary of Louis XVI before the Marquis de Lafayette sent them to Washington in November 1786; after they died, he gave them to Charles Wilson Peale, who ran a Philadelphia museum.
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A Komodo dragon skull is said to come from the 1926 expedition that inspired the film, King Kong.
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that → say → film
An oyster from around 1856 holds a pearlfish mummified in mother of pearl.
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oyster → hold → pearl
A blue morpho butterfly shows male markings on one wing and female markings on the other, a trait said to occur in only one in 10,000 butterflies.
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butterfly → show → butterflies
How scientists still study life across billions of years with old specimens
Beauty and research often overlap, as in this case, a rare form of crystalline gold looks like metallic coral, and a fossil slab from Morocco's Atlas Mountains preserves swirling patterns left by cephalopods that swam in a shallow sea around 370 million years ago.
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Beetles and weevils owe their metallic shine to crystalline scales, which society women of the mid-1800s used like sequins.
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women → owe → sequins
Notably, a fully articulated polar bear, in the collection since at least 1878, is still used as a research tool.
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Genetic material from its skin informs scientists about population diversity, while stable isotopes in its fur reveal ecological conditions during its life.
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isotopes → inform → life
Michaela Schmull, curator of ferns, says, "Discovering the stories is one of the best jobs."
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The Aporia
