Ever since his childhood, Theodore Roosevelt had a sharp eye for natural history and a love for the outdoors. When he became President in 1901, he was poised to use his lifelong passion for wildlife and wilderness to direct public policy; while in office, he launched programs that would eventually protect 230 million acres of land.

After more than a year of restoration work, the classic habitat dioramas in the Hall of North American Mammals, which reopens this fall, seem more vibrant and realistic than ever. While the diorama scenes haven’t changed, decades of scientific research and discovery are offering new insight into the stories they tell. Below, the second in a series of posts, this one about coyotes and wolves, on the new science behind the hall.

In 1896, a Museum-led team began excavating ruins of an Ancestral Pueblo settlement in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. That work would yield tens of thousands of artifacts, including the jet frog pictured here, and generate one of the most intensely researched collections of its kind in the world. It would also inspire an act of Congress, called the Antiquities Act and signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, under which the site and others like it would be protected as national monuments.

© AMNH/Natural Science Conservation

After more than a year of restoration work, the classic habitat dioramas in the Hall of North American Mammals, which reopens this fall, seem more vibrant and realistic than ever. While the diorama scenes haven’t changed, decades of scientific research and discovery are offering new insight into the stories they tell. Below, the first in a series of posts on the new science behind the hall, this one about the majestic diorama of the Alaska moose.

In 1867, two years before this Museum was founded, eight-year-old wildlife enthusiast Theodore Roosevelt Jr. created his own Roosevelt Natural History Museum in his family’s New York City home. The collection included the skull of a seal, birds’ nests, insects, and mouse skeletons. He collected and mounted this Snowy Owl near Oyster Bay, Long Island, in 1876.