Description of the attraction
The Natural History Museum of Oman is located in the Al Quayr building opposite the Zawawi Mosque. He shares this building with the Omani Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The museum received its first visitors on December 20, 1985. It is dedicated to the flora, fauna and geological treasures of this country. At the entrance to the museum, a petrified tree was found, whose age is 270 million years. It was discovered in a desert that was covered in rainforest many years ago.
The Natural History Museum is modest in size. There is no shop or cafeteria, but a unique collection of stuffed animals is located on the ground floor. Installed here, interactive displays allow you to see the habitat of leopards, turtles, mongooses, hedgehogs, birds, snakes, now extinct Asian cheetahs and other representatives of the fauna of Oman. That is, the guest of the museum also receives a lesson in the geography of the Sultanate. Some stuffed animals are set against realistic painted landscapes.
A good selection of meteorites that have fallen in Oman can be found in the Oman Through Time section. It also displays samples of minerals mined in this country and various minerals.
The most valuable exhibit of the museum is the skeleton of a huge sperm whale, discovered on the coast of the Gulf of Oman in 1986. It is suspended from the ceiling in the marine animal hall. Skeletons of smaller sea creatures and shells of molluscs are located around it. Here you can also listen to the sounds made by various marine animals.
