Admission to the OMSI in Portland is pretty steep at $13 excluding special exhibitions. The main level has a gift shop, auditorium, and a kid-friendly science hall with interactive exhibits in a former power station.
The natural sciences gallery upstairs has an excellent display of preserved human embryos from one month after conception until just before birth. It’s the only science museum (apart from Charité Hospital in Berlin) where I’ve seen 41 embryos displayed in chronological order. Unfortunately, photography is not permitted in this exhibit.
Right behind the creepy embryos is a palaeontology lab where I watched a live palaeontologist process the bones of a triceratops. I wonder how palaeontologists would feel if they know that their bones would be uncovered by future palaeontologists in the same way?
The USS Blueback submarine is a part of the museum but it’s only seasonally open, so I didn’t get to see it. With nothing much to see, I think I wasted $13 and left.
