What’s Happening at Houston’s Museum of Natural Science This Summer?

What’s all the hoopalooza over Houston’s museum of natural science’s summer-long “Geopalooza Hard Rock Anthology” ? Maybe, you too have seen the billboards and other ads touting the show. The Midtown Houston attraction, has stocked the place with an amazing array of rock, gem and mineral specimens.

Some of the huge geodes on display are taller than the average person and come from all over the world, a few, out of this world. That’s right, some of them are part of NASA’s moon rock collection while others are meteorites that have traveled from the far regions of outer space to be a part in this amazing exhibit.

Interactive Exhibits

The exhibition features ancient fossils, including trilobites, crystallized slices of petrified wood and fluorescent rocks that glow in every color of the rainbow.

This isn’t your everyday hands off exhibit. The interactive “Geopalooza Hard Rock Anthology” allows you to participate first hand in a geological discovery. You can actually select the geode of your choice and witness it being opened for the very first time.

There is also a “Dig Pit” to keep the littlest paleontologist, children from ages 3 – 11, busy by digging for fossil replicas.

Geopalooza: Houston’s museum of natural science’s exhibit, pulls out all the stops to make sure everyone can enjoy this geological adventure. The museum has gold panning kits available, where you can try your luck at finding minerals or even gemstones. Don’t fret, no one will go home empty handed, each patron gets to take home a souvenir vial with a specimen.

Rare and Beautiful Treasures




If you’re partial to those refined rocks or gems, check out the museum’s spectacular display at Cullen Hall. It boasts more than 750 beautifully crystallized mineral specimens including, some are the world’s rarest and most beautiful gems.

You will marvel at these precious gems and how the fiber-optic lighting creates such a unique view of these dazzling treasures in their walk-around display cases.

If you are visiting the city and want to find the museum, just remember the Museum District is on the Southside of Midtown Houston, near Herman Park and the Texas Medical Center. Tickets, museum hours, reservations for groups and lots more information on some of the other exhibits can be found at the museum’s website hmns.org.

[Where: One Hermann Circle Drive, Houston, TX 77030]