Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy

The Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy shows a long, glass-roofed hall packed with skeletons standing on steel platforms. It was built for the nineteen hundred World Fair to house the massive collection of the National Museum of Natural History. Inside, Albert Gaudry curated the displays to trace the evolution of species. When the gallery opened, visitors found a wall of bones representing the genealogy of animals, arranged precisely as Gaudry envisioned to prove his theories on the transformation of life.