With 45 exhibition halls and more than 32 million artifacts and specimens, the world's largest and most important museum of natural history can easily occupy you for half a day. Dinosaur mania begins in the barrel-vaulted Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, where a 50-foot-tall skeleton of a barosaurus rears on its hind legs, protecting its fossilized baby from an enormous marauding allosaurus. Three spectacular dinosaur halls on the fourth floor -- the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs, and the Hall of Vertebrate Origins -- use real fossils and interactive computer stations to present interpretations of how dinosaurs and pterodactyls might have behaved. In the Hall of Fossil Mammals, interactive video monitors featuring museum curators explain what caused the woolly mammoth to vanish from the Earth and why mammals don't have to lay eggs to have babies. The Hall of Biodiversity focuses on Earth's wealth of plants and animals; its main attraction is the walk-through "Dzanga-Sangha Rainforest," a life-size diorama complete with the sounds of the African tropics -- from bird calls to chain saws. In the revamped Hall of Meteorites, the 34-ton Ahnighito -- the largest meteorite on display in the world -- is accompanied by a video on space rocks narrated by Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut. The Hall of Human Biology and Evolution's wondrously detailed dioramas trace human origins and feature a computerized archaeological dig. The popular 94-foot blue whale model swims high above the Hall of Ocean Life, a "fully immersive marine environment," complete with shimmering blue lighting and whale song. For a taste of what the museum was like before computers and other high-tech wizardry were introduced, visit the softly lighted Carl Akeley Hall of African Mammals, where a small herd of elephants is frozen in time and surrounded by artful early-20th-century dioramas depicting beasts in their habitats.

Attached to the museum is the Rose Center for Earth and Space, with various exhibits and the Hayden Planetarium. Films on the museum's 40-foot-high, 66-foot-wide IMAX Theater (212/769-5034 show times) screen are usually about nature (climbing Mt. Everest or an underwater journey to the wreck of the Titanic) and cost $19, including museum admission.

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