Valley Life Sciences Building - A T. rex Indoors

Photo: Daniel L. Lu (user:dllu), CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on UC Berkeley Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

This massive building went up in 1930 as the home of Berkeley's life sciences, state-of-the-art for its day. Decades later it was gutted and rebuilt inside, a five-year project that cost more than fifty times the original price tag.

The reason to step inside, when the building is open, is waiting in the atrium. A full-size cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton rears up through the stairwell, unveiled by the UC Museum of Paleontology in 1995. It is a copy of a remarkably complete skeleton found in Montana on the shore of Fort Peck Lake; the original bones are at the Museum of the Rockies. Fitting the dinosaur into a round stairwell about 20 feet across took careful planning, and an internal steel frame braces it against earthquakes.

The building also houses the museum's research collections and labs for biology, where students study everything from fossils to living ecosystems. Even a few minutes looking up at the T. rex from the bottom of the stairs is worth the detour.

Getting here: Walk east about 150 meters from the natural area to the large building on its north side.

Did you know?: The atrium is just tall enough for the dinosaur: the mount was designed to rise up through the circular stairwell rather than stand on a gallery floor.

Photo op: Stand at the bottom of the atrium stairs and shoot upward to fit the T. rex skull against the skylight.

More on Wikipedia: University of California Museum of Paleontology · Museum of the Rockies

Valley Life Sciences Building - A T. rex Indoors

Stops on this tour