Have you ever experienced the joy of finding something wonderful?

Maybe you knew what it was and had been searching for it. Or maybe you had no idea what it was and just couldn’t wait to figure it out.

Explore More Collections is a one-of-a-kind environment where visitors engage in the process of finding, identifying and connecting objects with the natural world.

Discovery Place has over 80,000 non-living items in Collections. From 4-million-year-old Amminoid fossils to a passenger pigeon collected in 1884, there isn’t a dull item to be discovered. Over 3,000 liquid preserved spiders, collected in North Carolina by Dr. David Grant, call the Museum Collections home.

Although the entirety of the Museum’s Collections cannot be displayed, the Explore More Collections lab provides visitors the opportunity to peek behind the curtain to see the wondrous items archived over the years.