Planning a future visit? Check out our offerings below!

Take your students on an exciting exploration of the natural world. Our three floors of exhibits, ranging from dinosaurs and dioramas to hands-on interactive stations, are sure to make your field trip to the Academy the highlight of the school year.

Special Exhibits

Under The Canopy: Animals of the Rainforest

February 17–September 2, 2024

Travel to the most diverse ecosystem on the planet! Under the Canopy: Animals of the Rainforest is an immersive exhibition introducing you to the fascinating world of rainforests and the animals that inhabit them. Learn about unique plants and rainforest ecology as you encounter a live sloth, boa constrictor and other animals that call these habitats home. Think big about the importance of rainforests to the planet as you explore interactive discovery stations, dynamic displays and engaging programming. Under the Canopy will leave you with knowledge and actions you can take — from choosing the best coffee to growing the right garden plants — to support healthier rainforest ecosystems and become an advocate for conservation.

Presented in English and Spanish, Under the Canopy will engage students of all ages, with accompanying curriculums on rainforests, water cycles, the science of diversity, deforestation and soil, how kids can save the planet and so much more. Hands-on interactives are complemented by life-size, climbable animal sculptures, including a gorilla, tortoise, crocodile, red-eye tree frog and Banyan tree.

Life Onto Land: The Devonian

November 11, 2023–September 29, 2024

You’ve likely heard of the Jurassic and the Cretaceous, but do you know about the Devonian? With its incredible diversity of terrestrial life, this fascinating period in geological history — hundreds of millions of years before the age of the dinosaurs — was pivotal in shaping the world as we know it today. All vertebrates living on land, including humans, stem from the remarkable creatures that began the move onto land in the Devonian Period.

Life Onto Land: The Devonian centers around the Academy’s internationally celebrated paleontological research and the incredible discovery of Tiktaalik roseae. Unearthed in 2004 on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut, this transitional fossil has been critical in piecing together a picture of how fins became limbs — or, of how terrestrial, limbed vertebrates arose from aquatic, lobe-finned ancestors.

This new exhibition features the original holotype specimen of Tiktaalik roseae and a newly commissioned Tiktaalik model by Tyler Keillor. See enchanting drawings by Spanish artist Aina Bestard, breathtaking footage of Arctic and Antarctic research sites and the vivid scientific illustrations of Scott Rawlins. Experience the stunning plant and animal fossils collected from Devonian rock found here in Pennsylvania and around the world.

Life Onto Land reveals the diverse marine, freshwater swamp and terrestrial ecosystems of this period, as well as the amazing scientific discoveries of the Academy’s team of paleontologists who continue to contribute to our understanding of this transformational time in our planet’s history.