Deep Time fossil viewer

Every fossil is evidence.

Move from dinosaurs to Ice Age mammals, ancient seas, and reconstructed worlds. Inspect each image, open its high-resolution view, and follow the evidence back to authoritative museum resources.

11 featured records4 subject paths1 complete fossil hall

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Continue the investigation

The viewer is a doorway, not the end of the record.

Complete enhanced fossil listFollow the full scene-by-scene inventory of fossils, panels, and interpretive media.National Fossil CollectionExplore the research collection and its digitized specimen records.FossiLabSee how fossils are prepared, conserved, photographed, and made ready for study.It’s a DateContinue with a Smithsonian activity on relative and absolute fossil dating.

Jurassic paleoart mural showing Diplodocus in a rainy landscape

Science made visible

The art is part of the interpretation.

Deep Time’s reconstructed environments were produced through collaboration among scientists, muralists, sculptors, model makers, writers, and designers. The exhibition credits more than three dozen murals by Julius Csotonyi and Andrey Atuchin, sculptures by Alexandra Lefort, scale-model murals by Dwayne Harty, and models by many artists.

Paleoart does not simply decorate the fossils. It makes visible the reasoned choices required to move from incomplete evidence to an ancient organism living in an ecosystem.

Read the exhibition fact sheet and artist credits