The largest museum of natural sciences in the Southeast, this architecturally stunning facility borders 65 acres of pristine forest. The building, which nearly eclipses the attractions inside, centers on a soaring three-story, sky-lit Great Hall--an Italianate brick atrium with spiral staircases, lofty columns, and windows revealing the woodlands beyond. Architect Graham Gund has achieved a marvelous integration of interior/exterior space. Look closely at the museum floors, where ancient fossil remains from the late Jurassic period are embedded.

When the Great Hall was designed, it was meant to one day be the home of a large-scale permanent dinosaur exhibition, and in 2000, Fernbank became the only place in the world to display a complete mounted skeleton of Argentinosaurus, the largest dinosaur ever found. The dramatic permanent exhibit, "Giants of the Mesozoic," features the 90-foot-long plant-eater as it defends its nest of eggs against the 45-foot-long Giganotosaurus, the largest meat-eater ever classified. Hovering above in the 86-foot-tall Great Hall are two flying pterosaurs. Dinosaurs just don't get any bigger than this, and it's a little hair-raising to walk into the hall and see these beasts towering over the tiny humans below.

There are several other permanent exhibits, including "A Walk Through Time in Georgia," which uses the state as a microcosm to tell the story of the earth's development through time and the chronology of life upon it. Eighteen galleries here re-create landform regions from the rolling pine-forested foothills of the Piedmont Plateau to the mossy Okefenokee Swamp, from the Cumberland Plateau (where you can walk through a typical "limestone cavern") to the marshy Coast and Barrier Islands. Exhibits are enhanced by creative films and videos, informational audiophones, interactive computers, sound effects, and old-fashioned field guides--not to mention more than 1,500 fabricated plants and mounted specimens of birds and animals. Visitors travel back 15 billion years to experience the origins of the universe (the Big Bang) and the formation of galaxies and solar systems, and into the future to consider the fate of our planet.

"Sensing Nature" tantalizes each of your senses with hands-on exhibits that explore how we experience the natural world. The room bristles with computers, colored lights, and mirrors, and you can step into a life-size kaleidoscope, play with perspective, gaze into infinity, see physical evidence of sound waves, and mix colors on a computer.

The "Children's Discovery Room," which is open daily June through August and on a limited basis during the school year, includes Fantasy Forest, a colorful play area designed for preschoolers (ages 3-5), where kids can become bees and pollinate flowers, climb a tree house, walk through a swamp, and play at being farmers. The state-shaped Georgia Adventure is a similar discovery room for ages 6 to 10.

While you're here, be sure to catch a stunning IMAX film (buy tickets as soon as you enter the museum; they sometimes sell out). The immense IMAX screen--5 stories high and 72 feet wide--puts you right in the middle of all the action.

Other museum attractions include a wetlands exhibit, a dramatically colorful living coral reef aquarium, a unique shell display, a gemstone collection, and the McClatchey Collection of jewelry and textiles from the old Silk Road countries. A museum store is stocked with entertaining and educational gifts and books, and there's a restaurant with arched windows overlooking Fernbank Forest, as well as outdoor patio seating.