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The David H. Koch Hall of Fossils—Deep Time is the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s permanent, free first-floor exhibition about how life, ecosystems and climate have changed across 4.6 billion years. It combines the restoration of a 1910 Beaux Arts gallery with conservation and installation of roughly 700 fossils, immersive exhibit design, public-facing science and digital interpretation.
The hall is not simply a dinosaur display. Its central visitor question is, “How have changes in Earth’s climate affected the evolution of life?” The route links ancient environments to present choices and future consequences, while the building itself becomes part of the story. The museum’s current visitor information, rather than the 2019 construction coverage, is the source for its permanent status, free admission and visitor resources.
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What is the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils—Deep Time?
Deep Time is a permanent exhibition on the first floor of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The museum lists it as always free and describes a journey beginning 4.6 billion years ago, moving through the evolution of planetary and animal life, ancient ecosystems and Earth’s changing climate. Its current exhibit page says the hall contains around 700 fossil specimens.
The exhibition asks visitors to read fossils as evidence of connected systems rather than as isolated curiosities. Animals, plants, atmosphere and climate change together; when one part of an ecosystem shifts, the others respond. That idea culminates in a question about the present: how will decisions made now appear when viewed on a geological timescale?
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Signature experiences include a Tyrannosaurus–Triceratops encounter, giant deer, Jurassic insects, the origin of life, touchable models and displays on human evolutionary history. The museum also presents the hall as a place to connect Earth’s distant past with today and the future, not as a prediction machine or a complete account of every interval in geological history.
The Smithsonian’s current Deep Time page is the best source for visitor-facing descriptions, online resources and any practical information that may change after this article is published.
How does the exhibition turn deep time into a visitor journey?
The design gives an otherwise incomprehensible timescale a physical sequence. Reich+Petch, the exhibition designer, describes a circulation path that starts near the museum rotunda in the more recent past and then moves into progressively deeper time. Large specimens, immersive environments, sculpture, models and video provide different ways to make each interval legible.
That direction of travel is an interpretive choice, not a claim that evolution follows a straight line toward modern humans. The route instead lets visitors compare environments and see repeated patterns: climate shifts, ecological turnover, adaptation, extinction and the emergence of new communities. A giant animal can establish scale, while a small fossil insect or plant can reveal how an entire habitat worked.
The exhibit’s climate framing is equally important. The museum asks how changes in Earth’s climate have affected the evolution of life and invites visitors to consider how present-day choices could matter in deep time. Smithsonian vertebrate paleontology curator Anna Kay Behrensmeyer summarized the intended message in a statement reproduced by Design and Production Incorporated: “Visitors will pick up on the fact that things are changing through time, ecosystems are changing as well as animals, and it’s an interconnected system from the beginning of life to the future.”
The hall therefore works on two scales at once. A visitor can focus on a particular fossil, reconstruction or encounter scene, then step back and see it as evidence in a much longer story about environmental change.
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How was the historic gallery restored while becoming a modern fossil hall?
The restoration and installation ran from August 2015 through June 2019, according to Building Design + Construction’s 2019 project account. The scope included the 1910 Beaux Arts gallery, building systems, specimen conservation and installation, exhibit fabrication and commissioning. The work was carried out while the project account says the museum remained open to eight million annual visitors—a historical figure describing the period of construction, not a current attendance statistic.
Restoring the envelope and daylight
The restored skylight is one of the clearest examples of old architecture and new conservation requirements meeting in one intervention. Building Design + Construction reports that the glazing used an aerogel-based system intended to filter ultraviolet light and heat. That matters because daylight can help preserve a historic interior while also accelerating damage to fossils, finishes, graphics and other materials if UV exposure and solar gain are left uncontrolled.
Recreated plasterwork returned missing or damaged Beaux Arts details. The goal was not to turn the room into a period set; it was to repair the architectural character so the new exhibition could occupy a coherent historic volume. New exhibit infrastructure had to coexist with the gallery’s restored proportions, sightlines and ornamental surfaces.
Making conservation visible
A principal addition is an enclosed FossiLab that allows visitors to watch scientific and preservation work. Instead of separating research from interpretation, the design places preparation and conservation within the visitor experience. The lab helps explain that a fossil hall depends on continuing work—stabilizing specimens, documenting them, preparing mounts and interpreting evidence—not just on objects that were finished before opening.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsSpecimen conservation also affected how objects were supported and displayed. Design and Production Incorporated says its work included specimen brackets, model making, bronze sculptures, dioramas, custom illustration and graphics, lighting, audiovisual hardware integration and as-built documentation. Those elements are the practical layer beneath the narrative: a large fossil must be structurally secure, visually readable and protected for long-term care.
Who delivered the Deep Time project?
The project used a design-bid-build delivery method. Building Design + Construction identifies EwingCole as the lead for architecture, structural engineering and mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering; the Smithsonian Institution’s Facilities/Office of Planning, Design and Construction as owner; Reich+Petch as exhibition designer; and Grunley Construction as general contractor.
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Several specialist roles then connected the building work to the visitor experience. Design and Production Incorporated reports responsibility for fabrication, installation, sculptures, dioramas, brackets, graphics, lighting and audiovisual integration. Richard Lewis Media Group says it developed 22 media pieces, including interactives, films and animations. The result is a coordinated project in which architecture, conservation, exhibit hardware, software and interpretation had to be commissioned together rather than treated as independent fit-outs.
Project timeline
| Stage | Documented detail |
|---|---|
| Construction and restoration period | August 2015–June 2019, reported by Building Design + Construction |
| Delivery method | Design-bid-build |
| Lead architecture and engineering | EwingCole |
| Owner | Smithsonian Institution Facilities/Office of Planning, Design and Construction |
| Exhibition design | Reich+Petch |
| General contractor | Grunley Construction |
Why do published floor-area and budget figures differ?
The available project sources do not agree on a single area or cost. Those figures should be cited to their publishers rather than blended into a supposedly precise total. The difference may reflect scope definitions, reporting dates or whether a source counts the entire restored gallery and associated work, but the available data does not establish a definitive reconciliation.
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| Publisher | Area reported | Cost or budget reported |
|---|---|---|
| Building Design + Construction (2019) | 32,000 square feet | $125 million total cost |
| Reich+Petch project page | 35,000 square feet; also describes the scope as over 31,000 square feet | $110 million budget |
For a construction audience, the disagreement is itself useful. Major cultural projects often pass through estimates, contracts, construction scopes and retrospective project descriptions that use different boundaries. A responsible account preserves the provenance of each number and avoids presenting the sources as if they reported one settled figure.
What makes the visitor interaction more than a row of display cases?
Deep Time combines conventional specimens with full-scale reconstructions, environmental scenes, sculpture, models, video and interactive media. Reich+Petch reports 48 touchable models, giving visitors a tactile way to understand anatomy, texture and scale. Touch elements can also provide an alternative route into the science for visitors who learn better through physical comparison than through text alone.
The Tyrannosaurus–Triceratops encounter is an example of using a dramatic reconstruction to pose an evidence-based question: what can bones, damage, posture and surrounding context tell us about an ancient interaction? Other displays shift attention away from famous dinosaurs to giant deer, Jurassic insects, early life and human evolution, reinforcing that the hall is about changing ecosystems rather than a single popular-animal narrative.
Media extends the interpretation beyond labels. Richard Lewis Media Group’s project page says its team created 22 pieces of media, including films, animations and interactives. These formats can show movement, reconstruct environments or present processes that cannot be observed directly in a fossil. They also allow the exhibition to connect a specimen to a broader climate or evolutionary explanation without physically adding another large object.
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The construction account from Design and Production Incorporated describes the integration of audiovisual hardware, lighting and custom graphics alongside physical fabrication. That combination is important: an interactive is only useful when its screen, controls, lighting, mount, software and explanatory content work as one exhibit component.
How does Deep Time support accessibility and remote learning?
The museum documents several ways to engage with the hall beyond an in-person walk-through: a virtual tour, an audio-description app, educational and teaching resources, 3D digital specimens and a downloadable Evolve or Perish board game. These resources serve different needs. A virtual tour can preview the spatial sequence; audio description can add visual context; 3D specimens allow close inspection from outside the gallery; and the game turns evolutionary change into a structured activity.
Because the museum’s online offerings can change, use the official exhibit page for current links and formats. The museum’s current online information documents these resources but does not establish a current inventory of physical products or museum-store items, so it would be misleading to attach a specific purchase recommendation.
What should visitors know before planning a visit?
Admission to Deep Time is always free according to the Smithsonian’s current visitor information, and the hall is permanent rather than a temporary exhibition. It is on the museum’s first floor. Check the museum’s current page for opening hours, access information, closures and any timed-entry or building-wide requirements, since those practical details can change even when the exhibition itself remains in place.
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- Start with the time sequence. Notice how the route moves from the recent past toward deeper time, then pause at the climate and ecosystem connections rather than treating each display as a standalone scene.
- Use more than one mode. Combine specimen labels with touchable models, media and environmental reconstructions. Each format answers a different kind of question about scale, behavior or habitat.
- Look for the work behind the objects. The FossiLab is designed to show preparation and preservation, making clear that research continues after excavation and installation.
- Bring the question forward. Ask how a climate or ecological shift changed the organisms in front of you, then consider what the same systems perspective implies for the present.
- Plan an online follow-up. The virtual tour, audio-description app, 3D specimens and educational materials can extend a visit or provide access when travel is not possible.
What can construction and museum teams learn from the project?
Deep Time demonstrates that a major exhibition in a historic building is a systems project. Restoring plaster and a skylight, controlling UV and heat, supporting irreplaceable specimens, integrating media and preserving public circulation all have to be resolved together. The project also shows why conservation should be treated as part of visitor design: the FossiLab makes the care of collections visible instead of hiding it behind the finished displays.
Its interpretive strategy offers a second lesson. A fossil hall can be scientifically ambitious without becoming a catalogue. By organizing the route around changing ecosystems and climate, the exhibition gives visitors a framework for linking individual specimens to planetary processes. As Smithsonian paleobotanist Scott Wing said in the Design and Production Incorporated account, “We now study the fossil record because it helps us understand the processes by which the Earth and life changed through time, and being geologic-scale changers of the environment ourselves, we need to know how those things work and how we’re changing them now.”
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That combination—careful restoration, visible scientific work and a clear time-based narrative—is what makes the hall a durable piece of public infrastructure as well as an exhibition. Its free, permanent status lets the Smithsonian keep using the restored gallery to ask the same urgent question across generations: what does the deep past reveal about the choices shaping the future?
How we assembled the project picture
The Smithsonian supplies current visitor and exhibit information. Building Design + Construction supplies the 2015–2019 restoration and installation account and its historical project figures. Reich+Petch describes the exhibition circulation and touchable models; Design and Production Incorporated describes fabrication and installation services; and Richard Lewis Media Group documents the media program. Their numbers and descriptions are kept attributed because they do not all define project scope in the same way.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I see fossil preparation taking place at Deep Time?
The hall includes an enclosed FossiLab designed for public viewing of scientific and preservation work. It is intended to show the preparation and care that happen behind a finished display, although the specific activity visible on a given day can vary.
Does the exhibition cover human evolution as well as dinosaurs?
Yes. The Smithsonian lists human evolutionary history among the subjects presented in the hall, alongside early life, Jurassic insects, giant deer and the Tyrannosaurus–Triceratops encounter. The broader organizing idea is changing life and ecosystems, not dinosaurs alone.
Are there online ways to explore the fossil hall before visiting Washington?
The museum provides a virtual tour, an audio-description app, 3D digital specimens and educational resources. Its official exhibit page is the reliable place to find the currently available versions and links.
Why might a construction article quote two different budgets for Deep Time?
Building Design + Construction reported a $125 million total cost, while Reich+Petch lists a $110 million budget. The sources may be using different scope or reporting definitions, and the available documentation does not reconcile them into one authoritative figure.
