From a thundering Tyrannosaurus rex to 140-million-year-old Mamenchisaurus bones, Shanghai’s newest attraction is a veritable Jurassic Park of excitement. Established in 1956, the Shanghai Natural History Museum was previously housed in the 1920s Shanghai Cotton Exchange, where only a fraction of its assemblage of artifacts could be displayed. A new architectural landmark in the downtown Jing’An Sculpture Park now does full justice to the museum’s incredible 10,000-piece collection, displayed across a whopping 45,000 square meters. Designed by Chicago-based architect Ralph Johnson of Perkins+Will and inspired by a nautilus shell, the six-story building coils around a sunken courtyard of Chinese-style landscaped rockeries and waterfalls, filling the underground exhibition spaces with natural light. Starting on the top floor with a starry-skied interpretation of the Big Bang, visitors descend through a series of elegantly designed spaces describing various aspects of creation and evolution, accompanied by bilingual background notes on touchscreens. Fossils and bones are brought to life through a menagerie of full-size moving models of ancient mammoths, whales, and other wildlife. Fun interactive technology includes machines to measure the cranial capacity of human skulls and 360-degree movie pods. But it’s the Chinese dinosaurs that steal the show. The journey winds up at the base of the lattice-walled central atrium where re-created skeletons of Asia’s largest dinosaurs, including the 26-meter-long Mamenchisaurus, provide a last jaw-dropping impression and spectacular photo ops set against the Chinese garden backdrop (260 Yan’an Dong Lu; 86-21/6321-3548).—Amy Fabris-Shi

This article originally appeared in the June/July print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“New Digs For Old Bones”)