Fossil Tours
We are now offering Museum Open houses! The last Saturday of every month stop by between 1 PM and 4 PM to meet your fossil primate friends and relatives! IT’S FREE! Know someone who loves learning about fossils? The Open House lets you go behind the scenes into the collections and fossil preparation lab where you can see recently collected specimens emerging from the rock for study by museum paleontologists.
Remember the DLC Museum NOT located at the Lemur Center’s main campus. We’re at 1013 Broad Street, just north of Duke’s East Campus. Our next open house is March 30, 2024. Can’t make that one? Come on by Saturday April 27, 2024 or May 25, 2024 (and so on and on and on).
Want to visit at another time? We also offer small, guided tours of the DLC Museum of Natural History! The Museum is located in Durham, NC, about 10 minutes from the Lemur Center’s main campus. As with all tours at the DLC, reservations must be made in advance. Read on for full details before clicking the link the end of this page to book your visit.
The Museum collection includes fossils, bones, and their replicas, so this tour is NOT recommended for guests who want to see living (non-fossil) lemurs. The DLC’s living lemurs are housed on our main campus off of Erwin Road, so if you’re hoping to see them, please click here for those tour options.
Lead Educator Alanna shows guests a skull of Megaladapis edwardsi, an extinct gorilla-sized lemur, in the Museum’s exhibit room. Also pictured are the skeleton of Palaeopropithecus, an extinct large sloth lemur and relative of the Coquerel’s sifaka; and the egg of an elephant bird, an extinct flightless bird from Madagascar and the largest bird ever known.
Tour Overview
Who? This tour is recommended for lemur and fossil enthusiasts ages 6+. Please note that while we’ll discuss ancient lemur-like primates and the evolutionary history of today’s lemurs, no living (non-fossil) animals are housed at the Museum. If you are hoping to see living lemurs, please click here for those tour options.
What? Tours will focus on our brand-new exhibit room, developed with funding from the NC Museums Grant Program. This small exhibit room (13′ x 16′ ) is chock-full of display cabinets with fascinating fossils and educational graphics, and throughout the course of your tour, your guide will take you on a journey through tens of millions of years of lemur evolution. If you’re interested in early primate evolution, you won’t find a collection or a tour experience like this anywhere else in the world!
When? At this time, tours are offered only on Tuesdays from 1:00 PM ’til 4:00 PM (exact dates and times are provided in the registration form linked below). Your tour length may vary based on your interests, but it will last up to one hour. Opening this exhibit is a collaboration between the small-but-mighty Museum and Education teams at the DLC, so we appreciate your understanding as we start with a limited schedule, and hope to expand tour our offerings in the future.
Where? The DLC Museum of Natural History is located at 1013 Broad Street in Durham, NC. Because space is extremely limited, you must have a tour reservation to visit the Museum. The tour will take place primarily indoors in small room without any seating provided. The Museum is in an older building, so while we have made every effort to make this tour as accessible as possible, we recommend contacting us ahead of time at primate@duke.edu to discuss any accessibility needs in your group to ensure that we can meet them.
How much? This tour will cost just $7 per person + tax. Because the exhibit space is limited, we are offering only six spots per tour at this time. Please note that while the tour group is small, this is not a private tour, so if you reserve two spots, you may be enjoying the tour with four additional lemur/fossil enthusiasts.
Book Now
Ready to book your tour of the DLC Museum of Natural History’s brand-new exhibit room? Click here to make your reservation!
