The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is synonymous with dinosaurs for many good reasons. Children and adults alike are forever fascinated with these giant creatures that roamed the earth 250 million years ago, and the Peabody is a world leader in ongoing research to continually learn more about them.

In fact, it was a discovery in the 1960s by Yale paleontologist John H. Ostrom of a dinosaur he named Deinonychus that forever changed our perception of dinosaurs from cold-blooded, dim-witted beasts to today’s universal belief that they were agile and sophisticated predators.

So, yes, dinosaurs have played a large role in the history of the museum now celebrating its 150th birthday. But over the years the Peabody has grown to become one of the world’s major repositories of all kinds of information that helps scientists across the globe answer questions about the earth’s past, present and future.

The Peabody’s major new exhibition, “Treasures of the Peabody: 150 Years of Exploration & Discovery,” showcases a tremendous number and variety of rare and unusual specimens and artifacts ranging from animals to plant life to ocean life, gleaned from its permanent collection of more than 13 million objects.

The exhibit equally highlights the visionary human beings whose research, discoveries and achievements not only transformed our concept of dinosaurs but also made a huge impact on our overall understanding of the evolution of life on earth.

Science writer Richard Conniff of Old Lyme, who graduated in the Yale class of 1973, has written a new book to compliment the Peabody exhibition catalogue titled “House of Lost Worlds” that tells the story of how the Peabody has “remade the way we see the world,” introducing a colorful cast of explorers, bone hunters and scientists.

“I knew this museum when I was a lot younger as an exhibit hall and then came here with my kids, and I didn’t really recognize how much history has taken place here,” Conniff remarks.

“So when I got working on this book, I just found incredible stories, one after the other, of the people who had been here. They weren’t just stories, they were great stories, they were exciting.

“These (individuals) were out doing dangerous things in far-off places, but also they were making major changes in our sense of the world being that they were creating the discovery of the great dinosaurs in the West in the 1870s and continued that work up through John Ostrom in the 1970s, who began the modern dinosaur revolution,” he adds. “All those things that inspired (the movie) Jurassic Park were basically modeled on the discoveries of John Ostrom.”

Describing the Peabody today, its director, David Skelly, who curated the exhibit with Thomas Near, calculates that 150,000 visitors come through the museum’s doors every year from all walks of life.

“As a university-based natural history museum, we’re one of the oldest and largest,” he says. “We support the research and teaching mission of the university, but we also have an enormous public mission. We’re one of the most visited cultural and scientific attractions in the state. Almost everyone’s kids and grandkids come through here at some point.”

Skelly also notes that the building housing the museum since 1925 on Whitney Avenue was erected after the original building on the Yale campus was demolished to make way for a new dormitory complex. And it was the vision of its new director, Richard Swan Lull, a leading expert on evolution who testified at the Scopes Trial, to display the story of evolution “from the amoeba to man.”

“He reorganized the entire first floor of the museum to become a walk-through experience to teach people about evolution, and that was a really radical departure from what museums had been previously,” Skelly explains. “If you look at pictures of old Victorian-era museums, they’d put a lot of variety of material in front of people to make it available for whatever purpose. This was much more laser-focused on making sure anyone who walked through there would get the message.” 

What you’ll see

Richard Kissel, director of public programs explains that the exhibit is divided into seven sections that form the greater narrative of the exhibit, starting in 1701 with the founding of Yale and leading up to today.

“In the ‘Discovering Nature’ section we wanted to look at objects in our collection that were either the first of their kind or a type specimen of a species,” Kissel says. “And so, examples we have go back to O.C. Marsh, our first unofficial director and a paleontologist. Marsh, known for his dinosaurs — he named Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, the list goes on — also had a very deep interest in mammals scurrying around the feet of these dinosaurs (including) a really beautiful gray specimen that’s about 50 million years old that Marsh named during his time here in the late 19th century.”

Kissel points out that some specimens on view date very far back but some are quite recent.

“This monkey skull was named in 2007 by an international team of researchers that included Peabody curator Eric Sargis, and it might be hard to believe, but we’re still finding new species of large mammals on the planet today.”

Also on exhibit is a new species of frog named just two years ago, in 2014, and discovered on Staten Island.

“It’s one of the most populated areas of this country and we’re still describing and discovering new species,” Kissel says.

There are also two birds on view from South America of a species that hasn’t been named yet.

“So again, this reinforces the fact that the specimens in our collections, even if collected decades and centuries ago, are still being used in active research” Kissel stresses, “and this gives a lens into how these specimens reveal different aspects of nature.”

Tim White, museum director of collections and operations, explains that the final section of the exhibition “looks at collections from fossils to botany to anthropology and how the planet has changed over time and how it’s changing today. Basically 50 million years ago this was a much more tropical environment and palm trees and alligators were found as far north as New Haven, and so looking at material like this helps scientists reconstruct the history of the earth and how climate has changed over time.”

Other exhibition highlights include Yaleosaurus, a rare herbivorous dinosaur skeleton from Connecticut now classified as Anchisaurus; Ichthyornis and Hesperornis, the ancient toothed birds from Kansas that convinced O.C. Marsh of a bird-dinosaur connection; and a letter from Charles Darwin to Marsh describing this discovery as “the best support” for his theory since the publication of “The Origin of Species.”

And for the younger set is a full-scale “Velociraptor” from Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park film series as well as the skeleton of famed circus gorilla Gargantua the Great.

IF YOU GO

What: “Treasures of the Peabody: 150 Years of Exploration & Discovery”

Where: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven

When: Through Jan. 8, 2017. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.

More info: Online at www.peabody.yale.edu or call (203) 432-5050.