San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat)

Nature lovers: this is your headquarters. For 150 years, the San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat) in Balboa Park has been the place where nature lovers gather to learn, discover, and share their love of this amazing place we call home.

It’s where the natural world of Southern California and the Baja California Peninsula comes alive. Where else can you find live rattlesnakes and iguanas, gorgeous geodes, and animal skulls of all sizes, all in one place? Go back millions of years to when sea cows, camels, and walruses lived in San Diego. Watch paleontologists clean fossils that were found on local construction sites. Take a selfie with a megalodon shark and get a behind-the-scenes look at some of the fascinating specimens we’ve had in storage. Then watch a Foucault pendulum prove that the earth is spinning (in case you weren’t sure).

The Nat has always been the gathering place for people who love nature, want to keep learning about it, and want to take good care of it. If you love this natural world we live in, The Nat welcomes you.