Natural History Museum of Utah

The Natural History Museum of Utah is part of the University of Utah and stands in the university's Research Park on the eastern foothills of Salt Lake City. It focuses on the natural history of Utah and the Intermountain West.

The museum was founded in 1963 and was first housed in an old university library building. In November 2011 it moved to the Rio Tinto Center, a new building designed by Ennead Architects with copper cladding that echoes the layers of Utah's rock formations.

The Past Worlds gallery has one of the largest displays of dinosaur fossils in the world, including many species first found in Utah. Other galleries cover gems and minerals, Native peoples of Utah, the Great Salt Lake, life in the soil and the state's landscapes. Large windows and the top floor terrace look out over the Salt Lake Valley.

Adult admission costs $24.95, with $22.95 for seniors aged 65 and over and young adults aged 13 to 24, and $20.95 for children aged 3 to 12; children 2 and under enter free. Museum members and University of Utah students, faculty and staff enter free. The museum is connected to Red Butte Garden by trails, and buses link it with the university and downtown.

The museum was conceived in 1959, established as the Utah Museum of Natural History in 1963 and opened to the public in 1969; it took its present name with the 2011 move. The Rio Tinto Center has about 163,000 square feet of floor space on a 17-acre site in the Wasatch foothills, designed by Ennead Architects of New York with GSBS of Salt Lake City, and the exhibits were planned by Ralph Appelbaum Associates.

Behind the galleries sit more than 1.65 million objects, including about one million anthropology items and 12,000 vertebrate fossils. Many of the Allosaurus skeletons come from the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in central Utah.