DATE: Noon-5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011.

EVENT: Behind the Scenes Day offers visitors a rare opportunity to visit spaces at the four museums in the Ruthven Museums Building that are usually not open to the public. Visitors on the free tours will see collection areas, research laboratories and exhibit preparation areas in the Exhibit Museum of Natural History, Museum of Anthropology, Museum of Paleontology, and Museum of Zoology. They will meet scientist-curators, collection managers, exhibit preparators and student researchers and find out more about their work.

At the Exhibit Museum, staff will discuss the process of building exhibits, especially the whale skeletons and exhibits currently underway. Upstairs, visitors can try their hand at casting a museum object, and visit the preparation laboratory. At 2 p.m. in Room 2009, Brandon Peecook, a doctoral student at the University of Washington who recently returned from a fossil collecting trip in Antarctica for the Burke Museum, will discuss his adventure in this extreme environment.

In the Museum of Anthropology, curators, staff and students will discuss their ongoing archaeological research and show rare collections of ancient artifacts—including half-million year old stone tools from the Middle East, elaborate pottery vessels and other objects from Peru, China, Mesopotamia and ancient North America. Tours of the Museum of Paleontology will take visitors into laboratories where research is conducted on Ice Age mammoths and mastodons, early dinosaurs, and the evolution of whales. Learn how paleontologists capture 3D information on the shape and structure of fossils to enhance our understanding of the lives of ancient organisms. See actual specimens of plant and animal species that inhabited Earth in ancient times. Visitors to the Museum of Zoology will see millions of preserved biological specimens of reptiles, amphibians, insects, mollusks, mammals, fish and birds and learn how research on museum specimens contributes to the study of global biodiversity, climate change, and evolution.

LOCATION: Ruthven Museums Building, 1109 Geddes Ave., Ann Arbor.

MORE INFORMATION:(734) 764-0478

Related Links:

• Exhibit Museum of Natural History