Beneski Museum of Natural History

This museum is great!!! A very informative museum located on a beautiful campus. The museum has long hours of operation. It contains many fossils and rocks. All of the exhibits have great descriptions to go along with them. The museum is located on three levels, which each level focusing on certain aspects of natural history. There is a great collection of artifacts from across the country and a lot of information relating to the local area.
I was very impressed with the amount of information presented and could have spent hours going through all the exhibits presented. There are not a lot of interactive exhibits which you may see at a bigger museum, but the atmosphere is great and with the free admission it is definitely worth going to if you are interested in fossils or the history of the Pioneer Valley.
The student who was at the reception desk was wearing pajamas and was the only negative part of the experience. Overall, a great museum with tons of information!!!

Tiny, but interesting natural history museum in the beautiful surroundings of Amherst. Best parts are the fossils still partly embedded in rock and the fossilized footprints.
The real name of this place is the Beneski Museum of Natural History. It’s not very big, especially compared to the American Museum of Natural History in New York or the Smithsonian in DC. However, it does have one of the best collections that I have seen of fossilized footprints and small fossilized animals, still encased within rock. Each of these fossilized remnants have well-​written explanatory signs nearby, many of which point out features of the fossilized creatures.
The ground floor is a room full of the (fossilized) bones of the huge megafauna that once roamed the earth — mammoths, mastodons, sabretoothed tigers, dire wolves, and more. The lower level has similar displays of dinosaur bones. Young kids will be entranced.
Hours appeared to be somewhat limited, but it’s free. Both the building and the layout of the museum are very modern.

The museum is three levels. The mineralogy and meteorite collections are behind some doors, so don’t miss those.
Some impressive dinosaur bones, including a triceratops skull, a tyrannosaurus skull, and a dunkleostreus (monster fish) skull.
They also have some meteorites, including the Canyon Diablo meteorite from Arizona. And they have an impressive collection of minerals.
The museum also has some informational panels that describe things such as what the Pioneer Valley looked like when it was covered with glaciers. This was very interesting. I learned a lot here. I’m glad they did this.
I would have liked more information about the fossils though. There were some large fossils hanging on the wall, and I had no idea what they were. But they do have a fossil room. You might find more information there.
The museum is on Barrett Hill Road which runs parallel to Route 9. They’re closed on Mondays. On most days they close at 4 PM, so get there early.

My daughter is a camp counselor K-​1 for the town of Amherst. In fact she grew up going to the former Pratt History Museum on campus. She knows the collection very well. She recently brought her group of 19 kids to the Museum. She gave it such high reviews I had to post it.
The tour guide was so informative, and age appropriate, keeping all 19 children actively engaged. The space is of course amazing. All of the children had a wonderful experience and want to go back.
Many thanks to Amherst College for making such a wonderful resource available to the public. You have done much to inspire young minds.

Sheer terror. That was the feeling I always associated with my childhood visits to the Amherst College Museum of Natural History. Enormous skeletons of mastodons and saber-​tooth tigers, gigantic fossils of brutish-​looking fish creatures, and the faint smell of death that hung about the old building all worked together to strike fear in my little heart. And then there were these tiny, sinister-​looking ceiling fans buzzing around the whole place, imminently ready to descend and cut me to pieces – ironically, these bothered me most of all.
These visits formed such a deep impression that I did not return until almost two decades later, when a friend needed to turn in a final lab report for a geology class at Amherst. There I was astounded to find all my old nemeses disarmed of their former powers and housed in a gorgeous new building alongside oodles of geological specimens, all accompanied by informative labels. I think being literate and about three feet taller made a huge difference here. If you are a child in the area who is not easily frightened and enjoys encountering the remains of massive, fearsome creatures, I highly recommend you ask the tall person (or people) you know best to take you here.