The College of Charleston’s Natural History Museum will be adding new Oceans Through Time exhibits from April 18 through May 15. During the installation, the Museum will be closed to the public. The Museum is located in the School of Sciences and Mathematics Building (202 Calhoun Street).
The exhibit will mimic the ocean and sea bottom, with fossils of bottom dwellers mounted on the “sea floor”, and floaters and swimmers mounted above in the “sea.” There will be two large feature specimens: the head shield of a giant armored placoderm fish and a complete skeleton of a large teleost (modern type) bony fish. There will also be a few small video presentations, “touch me” specimens, and several fossil whale skulls from the Charleston area. The display will be arranged chronologically from oldest (3.45 billion years old) to youngest (a few million years old).
All exhibits in the Natural History Museum are part of the fossil collection donated by Chris and Mace Brown.
This museum contains more than 2,000 vertebrate and invertebrate fossils. The collection’s focus is on North American mammals, and 90-percent of these mammals once roamed the South Carolina Lowcountry. This visually stunning collection includes complete skeletons of mammals, such as, a giant armadillo, a cave bear, and a saber-tooth cat.
For more information, contact Jim Carew, director and curator of the Natural History Museum, at 843-953-5592.
