State Darwin Museum

It's fitting that the largest natural history museum would be dedicated to one of history's most prominent and celebrated naturalists.

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

The State Darwin Museum (SDM) was built in Moscow in 1907, under pressure and persuasion from A.F. Kots, a young Russian scientist who was very fond of Darwin. It is said to have been the first museum of natural history in the world.

There are more than 5,000 items occupying the three floors of the museum. One of the more impressive sections has a plethora of dinosaur models, presented with a fabulous dinosaur soundtrack. SDM presents a complete scientific picture of the evolution of the living world, and a large display showing the variety of wildlife on earth, with animals from all climatic zones from the North Pole to the South.

One of the largest collections of the museum is the birds collection, which consists of many exotic species, including hummingbirds and birds of paradise.