The Peabody Museum of Natural History
Utropiia’s Natural History Museum is one of the city’s must-see attractions, famous not only for the wealth of its extensive collections ranging from live carnivorous plants to dinosaur fossils, but also because of the peculiar life of its founder, Hercules Peabody.
The eccentric Mr. Peabody was a wealthy entrepreneur and famous inventor and one of Utropiia’s most celebrated citizens, before his ambition led him to make questionable choices that ultimately brought his downfall. Since his mysterious disappearance, Peabody has become a symbol of the city, embodying Utropiia’s genius, arrogance, and folly.
During his lifetime, Peabody organized expeditions all over the continent and further out, amassing a vast collection of geological samples, natural and anatomy samples, plants, and animals, may of which he hunted and captured himself.
He housed his specimens at first in his own residence, turning it into a famed cabinet of curiosities, then when his collections outgrew his house in the adjoining houses and city blocks, which he purchased and connected with passages and walkways, creating Utropiia’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Over the years the museum grew to its current size of 350 000 square meters, with its multiple entrances throughout the city, and with galleries including fossils and evolution, the famed animated dinosaur dioramas, the insect galleries, the carnivorous plants, and much more, all connected by the meandering Great Hall of Wonders.
Dinosaurs and controversy:
We make no assertions, nor do we pass any judgment, but it must be noted for the sake of transparency that the Museum has been accused of making up certain stories or even embellishing some specimens and fossils in its collection.
Hercules Peabody was indeed very competitive, and in his quest to amass the greatest collection of fossils and specimens, he seems not to have been opposed to taking certain shortcuts.
Visitors to Utropiia are encouraged to keep a critical mind and form their own opinions.
The Museum’s Fossil Collection and the Moving Dinosaur Dioramas are housed in the Museum’s largest galleries, and showcases the incredible collection of fossils amassed By H. Peabody, but also brings these prehistoric beasts to life in a series of stunning animated dioramas.
These life-size dioramas show these ancient monsters as they were millions of years ago, walking, grazing, and hunting in their faithfully recreated environments. They are given the stunning appearance of life by the Museum’s technicians through complex mechanical systems and rubberized skins, and placed in environments that combine real plants with lovingly painted backgrounds, giving the illusion of infinite vistas.
As for the fossils, they occupy many of the Museum’s oldest and most beautiful wings, some of the very first established by Peabody himself. Many of the Museum’s fossil were found beneath Utropiia while excavating the underground to make way for the city’s power and sanitary systems, and it is remarkable to contemplate the wild nature and formidable monsters that once thrived where the bustling metropolis of Utropiia now stands.
Any visitors suffering from insectophobia or arachnophobia are advised to avoid the Museum’s Insect Galleries!
Room after room showcase insects from all around the world including a stunning specimens of a giant Desert Tank Beetle, the largest of its species ever found, and a specimen of a giant burrowing tick that is positively bone-chilling.
The Great hall of Discovery runs the entire length of the Museum across dozens of city blocks and several levels of the city, and consists of a succession of majestic rooms showcasing artificial lakes, greenhouses and life-size dioramas.
Strolling through the Great Hall, visitors travel from a luxurious tropical garden to a prehistoric environment home to menacing life-size sauropods, across artificial lakes and under a roaring waterfall, and back to a peaceful marsh environment inhabited by live birds.
The Great Hall connects on each side to the Museum’s many galleries, such as the renowned Fossil Collection, the stirring Moving Dinosaur Dioramas, the hair-raising Insect Galleries, the eerie Carnivorous Plant Hall, the wondrous Gem Caverns, and the wondrous Aquatic Rotunda, affectionately nicknamed the Fishbowl by Utropiians.
During a single visit to the Museum, one can be chased by a dinosaur, feed a carnivorous shrub, marvel at the world’s largest gems, and get lost in a refreshing seafront habitat.
But a single visit will certainly not suffice to take in all the Museum’s wonders, so we strongly recommend that visitors to Utropiia purchase a weekly ticket. The Museum has many entrances, giving visitors ever-changing perspectives on its maze of treasures.
One of the Museum’s most prized artifacts is this drawing, artist unknown, of H. Peabody’s encounter with what is believed to have been the last living plesiosaur, encountered in a closed-off lagoon during one of his tropical expeditions.
The ancient plesiosaur had somehow survived in this forsaken part of the jungle, and attacked Peabody’s expedition when it disturbed it habitat.
Accounts of this encounter are hazy, but Peabody himself asserts that he successfully fought off the prehistoric monster and sent it back to its murky underwater hideout, breaking one of its teeth in the process.
This tooth, along with this drawing, are the only artifacts left from the encounter, and can be viewed in the Museum.
The Carnivorous Plant Galleries are one of the Museum’s biggest draw, especially around feeding time, when the courageous Museum employees venture into the greenhouses to feed the oversized shrubbery.
Do not be fooled by the wondrous colors of the flowers on display in the Blossom Arboretum, these beautiful buds are quite aggressive, and accidents can happen in the blink of an eye!