The Russian Dinosaur Exposition

The Russian Dinosaur Exposition is the largest traveling exposition in the world! It is composed of 66 specimens of which 33 are complete skeletons. This exhibit comes from the scientific collection of the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (PIN RAS). These skeletons are 90 to 95% complete and many of them are type specimens which means that they are either one of a kind, the first discovered, or the best known specimen. The collection includes the finest assemblage of mammal-like reptiles in the world. Our exhibit covers about 180 million years, displaying terrestrial vertebrates from the Late Permian labyrinthodonts and mammal-like reptiles to the Late Cretaceous dinosaurs.

The Paleontological Museum in Moscow

The Museum of the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow is among the largest paleontological museums in the world. As with other world-class museums, it displays only a small part of vast collections of the Paleontological Institute. The Museum in Moscow was opened for the first time in 1937, but its history goes back to the "Kunstkammer" founded by Peter the Great in St. Petersburg in 1716. The Kunstkammer, the first public museum in Russia, was destined to house a collection of rarities, including some mammalian fossils of the Ice Age. In 1934, the Institute and its Museum moved to Moscow. Because of intensive field collecting carried out by the Paleontological Institute in many regions of Russia, the former Soviet Republics, as well as in Mongolia and China, both its research collections and museum exposition outgrew the facility and had to relocate. A new building of a very unusual design was constructed for the Paleontological Institue and Museum at the end of the 1970's. A new Museum of the Paleontological Institute was completed and opened in 1987. It occupies 4200 square meters (42,000 square feet) of display space consisting of four halls: the Hall of the Early Paleozoic and Invertabrates, the Hall of the Late Paleozoic, the Mesozoic Hall (the Age of Dinosaurs), and the Cenozoic Hall (the Age of Mammals). "Russian Dinosaur Exhibition" contains just a small, but representative sample from two halls of the Museum in Moscow - the Hall of the late Paleozoic and the Mesozoic Hall.