Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum

The museum descends from the Raffles Museum founded in 1849, whose zoological collections survived a century of institutional upheaval, and it opened in this building in 2015. Its centrepiece is three diplodocid sauropod skeletons, nicknamed Prince, Apollonia and Twinky, excavated together in Wyoming and bought as a group, which is unusual: most museums have one. The Singapore collections behind them run to about a million specimens.

What you actually see

• The three sauropods - diplodocid skeletons found and mounted together.
• The Raffles collections - zoological specimens going back to 1849.
• The regional biodiversity galleries - Southeast Asian species and habitats.
• The green roof - the building's planted exterior on the NUS campus.

When to go

Year round; the museum closes on Mondays and uses timed tickets that sell out at weekends and school holidays. Booking ahead is necessary. Weekday mornings are quietest.

Honest expectations

Timed tickets must be booked and sell out; walking up rarely works. The museum is on a university campus and awkward to reach. It is smaller than the dinosaur billing suggests.

Nearby

Kent Ridge Park is nearby, and Gillman Barracks is east.