What does HMNS stand for?

The Houston museum of Natural Sciences will also feature the IMAX film Journey to Mecca, which documents Ibn Battuta's extensive voyage.

2 million-year-old ancestral fossil discovered in 1974, most recently was shown at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

2 million-year-old ancestral fossil discovered in 1974, most recently was shown at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) was one chosen to showcase the world-famous Exhibition for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Bartsch, president of the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Meeting Leonardo is a very moving, intimate experience," renowned paleontologist Robert T Bakker (known to friends as "Dinosaur Bob", and the model for the beardy Dr Robert Burke in Steven Spielberg 's Jurassic Park) says of the perfect fossilised plant-eating dinosaur, found complete with skin and stomach contents in Montana in 2002, which will be the star of an exhibition opening at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and then touring the world.

Houston also boasts a thriving museum district, ranging from the vast Houston Museum of Natural Science, which has its own butterfly house, to the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum which uses actors to tell the history of the legendary all-black regiments, from their civil war beginnings to desegregation.

Visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science and check out the IMAX, planetarium, and Cockrell Butterfly Center.