Habitat Hall

Details

Date: January 15, 2026 - July 31, 2028

Location

409 West Circle Drive
East Lansing, MI 48824

Habitat Hall features life-sized dioramas depicting the major habitats of North and Central America including forests, grasslands, deserts, tropics and the tundra. Each has hoofed mammals and other animals, showing their adaptations to the different environments. Also featured are complete, mounted articulated skeleton casts of two of the great Jurassic dinosaurs, Allosaurus and Stegosaurus, and several smaller displays related to dinosaurs.

Gallery

Visitors explore a round hall in a Museum with beige walls and life-size dioramas featuring different climates of North and South America. On the left can be seen large articulated skeletons, partially cropped out of the image.

A blue sky streaked with clouds stretches above three tan-colored caribou: a female, male, and young calf. Boulders and smaller rocks surround the caribou, as they look out over a mountain top, over a lake down in a distant valley. The animals browse the moss, lichen, birch, and other plants, as the rest of their herd grazes in the background. The adult caribou, both male and female, have long, branching antlers. A medium brown bird, slightly smaller than a chicken, sits among the rocks.

A diorama of a tropical rain forest scene in Mexico. The lush understory is densely filled with green foliage, vertical climbing vines, and multiple tree trunks. Dappled sunlight trickles down from the canopy. Darker, shadowy greens fill the background, and the scene grows brighter and lighter towards the front. Large, broad leaves capture what little sunlight filters through to the forest floor, and large woody vines and mosses cover the larger trees. A tiny brown deer, called a mazama or brocket deer, stands just right of center in the front clearing, seemingly peering out cautiously at the observer. It stands about 2 feet (0.6 meters) tall, with a stocky body, slender, and large ears that stick up on either side of its head. The ground is scattered with fallen leaves. From the left, a 2 inch (5 cm) long iguana perches on a large tree root growing along the foreground. The iguana is banded with light blue, black, and green stripes along its body to help it camouflage itself in the dense, green foliage from predators. In the background, up high and almost hidden, a toucan with its long beak and a spider monkey perch in the palm tree.

On a rocky outcrop in a vast sea of grass, four tan-colored hoofed mammals known as pronghorn antelopes graze on grasses and other plants. These pronghorns stand about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and smaller. Their short fur features white underbellies and banding around their cream-colored throats. A fawn and a doe stand on slender legs, gazing off to the left. Another doe and a buck with dark-brown, Y-shaped antlers stand nearby, looking off to the right. Beneath their hooves, sparse patches of yucca sprout from the rocky soil of this flat-topped hill. Behind the antelope, the grassland spreads out in all directions. The wide prairie sky with puffy white clouds is a blue dome above them.

Underneath a canopy of towering maple and beech trees, a white-tailed deer and her two small fawns scan the area around them. The doe keeps a watchful eye to the left of the scene, while the white-spotted fawns peer off to the right. Below them, brown leaves carpet the forest floor. A ruffed grouse with its long, fan-shaped tail flies to the right above a fallen log, while mushrooms and bracket fungus grow from beneath. Other animals share the tranquil forest scene, including a brown fox squirrel with its bushy tail; and a black and white striped skunk wandering through the leaf litter. Behind the specimens, a painted mural of beech and maple trees makes the forest seem to extend into the distance.

It’s autumn, and the trees have lost most of their leaves. Tall jack pines and waving grasses ring the shore of a lake in southern Ontario, where a dark brown bull moose appears near the shore. The largest member of the deer family stands tall, his head raised, and his body angled toward us. His large, beam-like antlers with broad, flat points stretch wide across his head. The moose’s face is long, with a loose fold of skin called a “dewlap” under its chin. Amid the boulders, dry grasses, and leafless trees, the moose shares this habitat with other animals, including a gray jay and a blue jay, perched on nearby branches. A beaver dam and gnawed stump lie in the distance under the gray, cloudy sky. A red and yellow floatplane is beginning to descend onto the water, bringing people into the boreal forest.

High in the Rocky Mountains in summer, a male elk with large antlers looks forward, as he stands on a surface of dirt and rock. Far in the distance, the mountains covered with green trees and bright white snow caps spread out wide, meeting the blue sky filled with puffy, white clouds. A marmot, a type of ground squirrel, with its brown, furry body and short brown legs lurks on a ledge nearby. Meanwhile, perched on a fallen branch, is a small, dark gray bird with black wings called a Clark’s Nutcracker. In the mural, a golden eagle soars with outstretched wings in the vast open space between the animals’ locations and the mountains behind them. In the painted mural at the back of the diorama, large empty spots amid the sea of green on the mountains show where people have been logging.