The University of British Columbia

The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is Vancouver’s natural history museum, dedicated to creating a shared sense of community and wonder.

Fall in love with the diversity of life as you explore 20,000 square feet of exhibits, visit the Allan Yap Teaching Lab, and stare through the jaws of the largest creature ever to live on Earth—the blue whale.

The museum puts UBC's natural history collections, with more than two million specimens, on public view for the first time. Among our treasures are a 26-metre-long blue whale skeleton suspended in the Djavad Mowafaghian Atrium, the third-largest fish collection in the nation, and myriad fossils, shells, insects, fungi, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and plants from around British Columbia and the world.

Through a combination of exhibits, hands-on activities, educators’ resources, public presentations, and community and cultural engagement, we are working to increase understanding of the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. Just as important, we connect the world-renowned scientists at the adjacent Biodiversity Research Centre with the public. This unique combination of world-class, university-based research and beautiful, compelling exhibits makes the research conducted by UBC scientists more accessible and more relevant to the public.

Find out more about us as featured on a recent episode of The Express...

Biodiversity

Humanity is embedded in a biodiverse world.

The Beaty Biodiversity Museum works to illuminate how biodiversity evolved, how it is maintained, why it matters to humans, and how we can conserve it. The museum seeks to nurture the sense of wonder that many--especially youth--feel in experiencing biodiversity in hopes that they choose to preserve it as citizens, and perhaps even study it as scientists.

Science studies life's diversity in order to understand common principles underlying the biology of all species, to understand how our ecosystems came to be and how they function, and to learn how to act sustainably. Since the early 20th century, biologists at UBC have archived specimens of the many species they have studied in our natural history collections. These specimens, over two million to date, hold precious information about species and ecosystems of the past and present, and are guarded as time capsules sent to biologists centuries into the future. During these past decades our effort has grown, making UBC one of the world's leading universities in biodiversity research. But those decades have also seen biodiversity, and humanity's future, ever more imperilled.

The museum's world-class researchers, curators, and dedicated and creative outreach staff all work toward celebrating human responses to biodiversity, including art, culture, and our own love for biodiversity. At its core, the museum is designed to spread enthusiasm by revealing the amazing stories and beauty of biodiversity.