The Nat opens new Paleo Center inside its Balboa Park basement

The Nat opens new Paleo Center inside its Balboa Park basement

BALBOA PARK – The San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat) is set to open its new Paleontology Center this Friday, June 6, where visitors can watch scientists work in real time. The new center on the Balboa Park institution’s basement floor is named after longtime employee and paleontologist Tom Deméré, who has headed up the museum’s paleontology division since 1994. The center has been years in the making, as large specimens such as whale fos…

The Nat museum brings fossils back to life at new Paleo Center

While the word “fossils” may have once once conjured images of elderly, nearsighted scientists toiling in silence in dank, dark basements, San Diego’s Natural History Museum is breathing new life into its collection with the addition of a $5.1 million Paleo Center that, yes, is downstairs and opens to the public on Friday. The story of Amazement in the Basement, as “the Nat” has coined the exhibit, began 150 years ago when the museum was founded…