Enjoy hundreds of exotic butterflies in a rainforest setting, witness a Southern Florida Calusa Indian welcoming ceremony, experience a life-size limestone cave and see a mammoth and mastodon from the last Ice Age.

Chartered by the Florida Legislature in 1917, the Florida Museum of Natural History serves as the state's official natural history museum. It is the largest collections-based natural history museum in the Southeast, with one of the nation's top-10 natural history collections. The museum's two main facilities are located in Gainesville on the University of Florida campus. Open year-round, the Florida Museum is one of the nation's top 10 museums with more than 28 million specimens, including one of the world's largest collections of butterflies and moths.

The Museum's exhibits include the Hall of Florida Fossils: Evolution of LIfe and Land, Butterfly Rainforest and the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, South Florida People and Environments, Northwest Florida: Waterways and Wildlife, Fossil Plant Garden, Florida Wildflower and Butterfly Garden, and several alternating temporary exhibits.