University of Tartu Natural History Museum opens new permanent exhibition

The oldest museum in Estonia, UT Natural History Museum, which was founded in 1802, opens its new exhibition on 16 January 2016. After four years of renovation works, the new permanent exhibition "Earth. Life. Story" and two seminar rooms were completed.

The new permanent exhibition takes visitors through the development of the Earth and its biota to modern day. Visitors can view placoderms from the Devonian Period, observe the operation of a butterfly "airfield" and see the first jackal in Estonia. There are also dioramas that depict plant and animal communities that inhabit areas on the Tartu meridian. In the live corner, children can meet the already familiar Japanese Rat Snake and a Mexican Redknee Tarantula, who were recently joined by a new inhabitant — a Green Iguana.

In the coming year, the traditional education days and conversation evenings will resume in the new seminar rooms. School pupils will continue to have the opportunity of learning about nature in museum lessons that take place in the museum’s geology and zoology classrooms.

More information about visiting the Natural History Museum is available on the museum’s website: http://www.loodusmuuseum.ut.ee/en/content/visitors.

The new permanent exhibition and seminar rooms in UT Natural History Museum were completed with funding from the environmental education infrastructure development programme of the European Regional Development Fund.

Additional information: Eva-Liisa Orula, Head of Communication at UT Natural History Museum, tel. 5342 2139, e-mail: eva-liisa.orula@ut.ee.