Summer's sweet good-bye

As summer draws to a close, we look forward to a busy fall filled with many exciting offerings, including the return of our Virtual School Workshops.

Reduced capacity and physical distancing measures are still in place at the museum. Enjoy our exhibitions in a relaxed atmosphere. Advance ticketing is required, so be sure to book your tickets online before you come.

We continue to regularly post new content on our social media channels. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Discover more on nature.ca.

Highlights

Science Moments
Owl adaptations

Visitors of all ages are having a hoot at our outdoor exhibition, Owls Rendez-vous. The live owls are fascinating, and there's so much to discover about their interesting adapations. How are owls able to rotate their heads? How do they use their senses to hunt? Find out in this video! If you haven't visited the live owls at the museum yet, book your tickets now at https://nature.ca

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Bring on the brrr!
Planet Ice: Mysteries of the Ice Ages
Now in Toronto!

Our super cool Planet Ice exhibition is now at the first stop on its national tour: the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. On view until March 2022, Planet Ice: Mysteries of the Ice Ages takes visitors on a journey through more than 80,000 years of history to explore how cold and ice have shaped the environment we know today.

Book your class for a science adventure!
Virtual School Workshops

Our popular workshop, Exploring Rocks and Minerals, gets underway October 5! Connect your classroom with our expert museum educators and enjoy a highly interactive presentation with demonstrations, close-ups, gallery highlights, and some behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Museum.

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Special presentation
Tide pool creatures up close

If you missed our virtual presentation for World Water Week featuring live tide pool creatures, you can still enjoy the video on Facebook. No account needed. Be sure to join us September 23 during Science Literacy Week for another wonderful look at tide pool creatures, with a spotlight on the purple sea urchin and its amazing adaptations. Details coming soon on our Facebook page. And for more great water-related resources, head to https://nature.ca/water

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Collections Corner

From the field to the herbarium
Dung moss

Museum botanists Lynn Gillespie, Paul Sokoloff, and Geoff Levin were on Baffin Island for five weeks this summer, collecting plants and lichens in Agguttinni Territorial Park. Among the 1000+ specimens collected was Round-fruited Dung Moss (Splachnum sphaericum). Dung mosses like this one signal that, buried beneath them, is dung or bones that give the soil a nutrient boost! Once it is packeted and labeled, this sample will join over one million specimens preserved in the National Herbarium of Canada. The top right image shows a sample of this same species collected 65 five years ago at Churchill, Manitoba. Although there’s a drying cabinet at the Museum, field teams on extended remote expeditions have to improvise: in this case, moss specimens were line-dried (bottom right), with clothes pins to keep them from blowing away in the Arctic wind! Learn more about dung moss in this engaging presentation from our Ignite! series.

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