Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée

The Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée is a long, light-filled hall of red brick and glass, built for the eighteen ninety-eight Exposition Universelle in the Jardin des Plantes. Designed by architect Ferdinand Dutert, the building was intended as a grand scientific palace, created to house massive collections of fossils and skeletons that had outgrown their previous spaces. Inside, the ground floor holds hundreds of skeletons of modern animals, while the upper levels feature an extensive collection of fossil vertebrates and plants, all organized to illustrate the evolution of life on Earth.