The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH; also branded as Florida Museum) is Florida's official state-sponsored and chartered natural history museum. Its main facilities are located at 3215 Hull Road on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville.
The role of the Florida Museum of Natural History as the official natural history museum for Florida, according to Florida Statute §1004.56, is "to make scientific investigations toward the sustained development of natural resources and a greater appreciation of human cultural heritage."
The main public exhibit facility, Powell Hall and the attached McGuire Center, is located in the Cultural Plaza, which it shares with the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art and the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The main research facility and former public exhibits building, Dickinson Hall, is located on the east side of campus at the corner of Museum Road and Newell Drive. On April 18, 2012, the American Institute of Architects's Florida chapter listed Dickinson Hall on its list of "Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places" survey results as the "Florida Museum of Natural History / Formerly Florida Museum of Natural Sciences."
Powell Hall's permanent public exhibits focus on the flora, fauna, fossils, and historic peoples of the state of Florida. The museum does not charge for admission to most exhibits; the exceptions are the Butterfly Rainforest and certain traveling exhibits.
Research The Florida Museum of Natural History received $8 million in annual research revenue in 2024.
History
The museum's collections were first used for teaching at Florida Agriculture College in Lake City in the 1800s, and were relocated to the campus of the University of Florida in 1906. The museum was chartered as the state's official natural history museum by the Florida Legislature in 1917. Formerly known as the Florida State Museum, the name was changed in 1988 to more accurately reflect the museum's mission and help avoid confusion with Florida State University, which is located in Tallahassee.
Current facilities In its over 100 years of operation, the Florida Museum of Natural History has been housed in several buildings, from the Seagle Building in downtown Gainesville, to the three halls on campus and one off-site research facility.
Dickinson Hall
Dickinson Hall, opened in 1971, is located on Museum Road. As of 2025, it housed over 25 million objects and artifacts in its collections, which cover the fields of ichthyology, paleontology (both vertebrate and invertebrate), botany, paleobotany and palynology, herpetology, malacology, mammalogy, ornithology, environmental archaeology, historical archaeology, archeology of the Caribbean and Florida, and ethnography of Latin and North Americas. It also houses a state-of-the-art Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics lab.
Powell Hall Located in the University of Florida Cultural Plaza, Powell Hall was constructed in 1995 and opened in 1998. It serves, along with the connected McGuire Center, as the main exhibits and public programs facility. Powell Hall was partially funded from a gift of $3 million from two University of Florida alumni couples, Bob and Ann Powell and Steve and Carol Powell of Fort Lauderdale, with matching funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Florida state government.
Randell Research Center
In 1996, the Randell family gave of the , internationally significant Pineland Site Complex in Lee County to the University of Florida, which the museum now operates as the Randell Research Center. This research and education program is an extension of the museum's Southwest Florida Project and "Year of the Indian" archeology/education project.
In 2008, the Randell Research Center completed a two-year program to plant more than 800 native trees to replace ones destroyed in the 2004 hurricanes Charley and Frances.
McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity
In 2000, William W. McGuire, then CEO of UnitedHealth Group, gave a $4.2 million gift to establish the William W. and Nadine M. McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. This gift was one of the largest private gifts ever given to foster research on insects, and was matched by the State of Florida Alec Courtelis Facilities Enhancement Challenge Grant Program. The McGuires later gave another $3 million to fund final construction of the center. This new $12 million facility for Lepidoptera research and public exhibits opened in August 2004.
The center houses a collection of more than 10 million butterfly and moth specimens, making it one of the largest collections of Lepidoptera in the world, rivaling that of the Natural History Museum in London. The collection includes extinct species. It started with around four million specimens, with space for significant further expansion. The collection brings together those from the Allyn Museum in Sarasota, other University of Florida collections, and the State of Florida's Division of Plant Industry collections.
The McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity serves both research and public education functions. The center includes the living Butterfly Rainforest and exhibit space that features information about lepidoptera and rainforests worldwide, as well as of research laboratories and collection space.
The research space includes laboratories focusing on molecular genetics, scanning electron microscopy, image analysis, conservation and captive propagation of endangered species, optical microscopy, and specimen preparation, as well as classrooms and offices for 12 faculty curators, collection managers, and other staff. Some of the research laboratories and collections can be viewed through glass panels at the back of the museum.
Public exhibits As of March 2025, the museum's public exhibits are closed for construction until July 2026. Renovations will include a new, permanent display by the Thompson Earth Sciences Institute, titled "Earth to Florida."
Butterfly Rainforest
The Butterfly Rainforest is a display of live butterflies in a large, outdoor enclosed space attached to the museum. It is the main exhibit in the McGuire Center which is accessed from the main entrance of Powell Hall. At any given time, the exhibit contains over 50 species of butterfly and moth species, totaling some 1,000 individuals. The butterflies are brought from around the world as chrysalises and released into the exhibit after emerging as adults. There are live butterfly releases every weekday at 2 p.m. Other features of the facility include over 600 plant species, waterfalls, and a controlled fog system.
Florida Fossils: Evolution of Life & Land Located in Powell Hall, this $2.5 million, exhibit describes the history of the Florida Platform through five geologic time periods.
The entrance to the hall showcases six fossil shark jaws, ranging in height from . The exhibition begins with five extinction events described in dioramas that lead visitors onto the Florida Platform at about 66 million years ago, at the Dawn of the Age of Mammals. The exhibition then takes visitors on a walk through time, beginning in the Eocene epoch, when Florida was underwater, and going through the Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. Visitors see Florida's first land animals, evolving grasslands and savannahs and the land bridge between North and South America that formed about 3 million years ago. The exhibit ends with the arrival of the first humans in Florida, near the end of the Pleistocene.
Displays include a primitive toothed whale from the Eocene, an oreodont from the Oligocene, a Miocene rhinoceros being attacked by two saber-toothed, cat-like animals, a -tall sloth standing on its hind legs in the Pliocene area and a 500,000-year-old jaguar chasing a peccary from the Pleistocene epoch. The time periods also include artwork by paleoartists from around the world, including a -tall steel sculpture of an extinct Terror Bird, titanis walleri. Over 90 percent of the exhibit's 500 fossils are real, and many were found within of Gainesville.
South Florida People & Environments
This exhibit, also in Powell Hall, consists of ten exhibit galleries that occupy a total of . The sequence of galleries is designed to give visitors a variety of experiences, including 3D immersion environments and more focused learning centers.
Visitors enter the exhibit through a re-created scene of a Calusa fishing village as it may have looked about 500 years ago. A young Calusa boy carries a shark on his shoulder, and behind him lies the village and view toward the Gulf of Mexico. Just past the village are four large glass wall panels depicting southwest Florida Indian art and environments. Beyond the panels is an orientation area, large enough for docents and teachers to gather a small group and introduce the exhibit. Interpretive panels preview the content and themes of the hall, augmented by a collage mural of south Florida people and environments.
Mangrove Boardwalk Gallery Visitors walk onto a wooden boardwalk into a full-scale re-creation of a southwest Florida mangrove forest and seagrass estuary. The boardwalk passes through mangrove trees, mudflats, and simulated water, featuring insect, bird, and water sounds and slow changes in lighting. A huge, 360-degree mural painting extends the view to distant barrier islands, bird rookeries, an upland area, and the heart of mangrove forests. Interpretive panels introduce the critical stories of the rich estuarine environment.
Natural Habitats Center This gallery features exhibits about the environments of South Florida and estuary ecosystems.
Underwater Walk-through
This gallery features a 12-times life-size underwater scene to explore the tiny organisms that sustain the estuary, brought to life by large sculptures of plants, fish, and invertebrates that surround the walkway.
Fishing Heritage Gallery This artifact-rich gallery highlights 6,000 years of fishing along Florida's Gulf coast. Displays focus on the fishing industry of the Calusa, their predecessors, and traditions that carried into the 20th century. It explores the significance of maritime adaptation as a basis for social and political complexity through topics such as fish, nets, native and post-contact fishing techniques, watercraft, and waterworks. This includes the remarkable engineering endeavors of the Calusa, who constructed large canals across southwest Florida, and their long-lived net-fishing tradition. Interactive multimedia stations illustrate topics such as net making and cordage manufacture, and a miniature diorama of a fishing village captures the essence of Calusa fishing. Artifacts include 1,000-year-old palm-fiber fishing nets, Calusa net-making tools, a wide range of shell tools, and an ancient wooden canoe paddle.
Calusa Mound and Village The dominant feature of this gallery is a large picture window and view of an outdoor mound, where sculptures of a Calusa family stand on the mound next to a palm-thatched house. Inside, interpretive panels discuss mounds and Calusa town plans. Next to the window, an interactive model shows a cutaway view of a mound and explains archaeologists' methods of interpreting the past.
Calusa Leader's House