In one sense, the opening of the UAE’s new Natural History Museum is a singular event. Doors to the landmark building in Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Cultural District will open to the public on Saturday, where visitors will be able to explore its 35,000 square metres of rare fossils, dinosaur skeletons, meteor fragments and more.
In another sense, however, the museum – the first of its kind in the Middle East – is one part of a much longer continuum. It describes a 13.8-billion-year journey through time and space that encompasses the origins of the universe, the emergence of life on Earth and humanity’s place in the cosmos. This is an odyssey that once captivated classical Islamic thinkers such as the 9th century Arab polymath Al-Jahiz whose seven-part Book of Animals was an early exploration of zoology.
Such inquiring minds would be at home in the UAE’s newest institution. Not only does the Natural History Museum house an array of unique artefacts, such as the skeleton of an 11.7-metre-tall Tyrannosaurus rex and the seven-billion-year-old Murchison meteorite, it will also function as a research institute. Palaeontology, geology, marine biology and molecular research are just some of the disciplines that will be studied in-house, leading to new insights and contributing to the Emirates’ work on natural sciences.
By placing itself in the ebb and flow of history, the museum also contextualises the story of the UAE itself. The Late Miocene Abu Dhabi gallery, for example, will house several one-to-one scale models of animals that once inhabited the emirate. Among these is one species that took its taxonomic name from the country – Stegotetrabelodon emiratus – a four-tusked, elephant-like creature now long extinct. The UAE will soon celebrate its 54th year but it is doing so while bringing to life its part in the universal story of creation and evolution.
Such universality is a theme running through many of the UAE’s other flagship museums and cultural institutions. Since it opened in 2017, Louvre Abu Dhabi has brought together numerous examples of human expression from different civilisations. The nearby Abrahamic Family House celebrates the common elements that exist between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, three worldwide monotheistic faiths that trace their roots to the Middle East. The Natural History Museum will be an important addition to this mosaic.
It is an exciting time for history and heritage in the UAE. New discoveries – such a 1,400-year-old Christian cross recently unearthed on Abu Dhabi’s Sir Bani Yas Island – continue to excite historians and scientists. Such developments build on the considerable legacy of Arab and Islamic knowledge and bring it forward into the 21st century, telling the story of the landscapes, peoples and cultures that have made the Middle East what it is today.
