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The Hyde Park mastodon was discovered when Larry Lozier hired an excavator to deepen the pond in the backyard of his home in suburban Hyde Park, New York in 1999. After the excavation, the family noticed some unusual-looking logs that on further investigation turned out to be the bones of a mastodon.^[11]

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Activities include a video illustrating the formation of the solar system and planet Earth, the Fossil Preparation Lab, and a garden that mimics the landscape of the northeastern United States during the Ice Age, with tundra vegetation, polished gravel, and large boulders (glacial erratics).^[10] The exhibit also features a selection of fossils from PRI’s collection and the Hyde Park Mastodon.

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This exhibit leads visitors through billions of years, from the Big Bang to the present day, with an additional focus on the future as shaped by human effects and dependence on Earth. A Journey Through Time explores scientifically technical areas such as geologic processes, evolution, biodiversity as well as the cultural contexts of such scientific understanding. The exhibits include three subsections devoted respectively to the Devonian of central New York State; the Triassic-Jurassicof the Connecticut, Newark, and Hudson Valleys; and the Quaternary Ice Age. The exhibit contains four audio-visual object theaters featuring short films narrated by geologist and Cornell President Emeritus Frank H.T. Rhodes.

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This exhibit is a series of 544 mural paintings by artist Barbara Page. The mural functions as a visual record of an immense period of time—an eon, five hundred and fifty million years—between the origin of visible macroscopic life on the planet and the present. Each of the tiles represents the passage of one million years. Fossil fauna and flora make their appearance in chronological order against a background reflecting geologic events. All of the organisms are depicted at true scale.^[8] A book contains reproductions of each painting and describes their scientific context in detail.^[9]

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PRI’s whale was mounted on a steel armature in a greenhouse on-site. The museum building was left open on the northeast end so that the whale could be brought through for installation. In November 2002, a crane carried the pieces into the building and lifted them to the ceiling, where they were attached to a beam built specifically for the purpose.^[7]

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The specimen was obtained by the PRI in 1999, when Director Dr. Warren D. Allmon expressed interest in acquiring the skeleton after he was notified by the National Marine Fisheries Service that a 44-foot Northern Right Whale had been spotted dead off the coast of Cape May, New Jersey. PRI was informed that they could take the skeleton if they assisted with cleaning the whale carcass. Three days later, the skeleton arrived at PRI.^[6]