The dioramas in the Jill and Lewis Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals have always been splendid, but after more than a year of painstaking restoration, they look better than ever. A multi-video series documents their renovation. In this video, experts describe how they added missing whiskers to the hall's cougar (mountain lion) diorama.

After a painstaking, yearlong process of restoration, the spectacular dioramas in the Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals are back to doing what they were always meant to do: transporting visitors to beautiful vistas as far away as Yellowstone or Alaska.

An early and enthusiastic nature photographer—the first Kodak camera came to market only in 1888—eminent Museum ornithologist Frank M. Chapman owned an assortment of cameras, including the 5x7 Graflex original now on display in the reopened Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall.

In this post, the fifth in a series, we explore a video-series now on amnh.tv and on the Museum's YouTube channel, about the making of the earliest habitat dioramas—whose vivid realism was meant to inspire environmental awareness.