Day Trip: Museum of South Florida

Bored kids? July in Florida cabin fever? It’s time for a summer safari!

Take a day trip to the South Florida Museum in Bradenton. It’s less than an hour’s drive. Located on Bradenton’s picturesque river front, the museum offers attractions to entice, enlighten and entertain every member of the family.

For the history lover, there is the natural history and Florida section, which welcomes you with towering mastodon skeleton, fossils, Paleo-Indian artifacts, Spanish courtyard, recreated Hernando de Soto’s house and chapel. For the science minded, there is the Bishop Planetarium, a state of the art “all digital dome theater” presenting six distinct presentations daily. Third is the Parker Manatee Aquarium home of Snooty, Florida’s famous almost 68 year old bachelor manatee. 

Our museum safari took place on a recent Wednesday. Traveling by car up I-75, we arrived at the museum at 11am and parked in the museum lot. We bought tickets and started our tour by picking up an activity schedule and map of the museum. A glance at the extensive schedule told us we better get started! We had a lot to see.

We began our tour in the Natural History section on the first floor where a huge mastodon skeleton welcomed us. Following were fossils: enormous bones from local mega fauna now extinct, saber tooth tigers, giant sloths, land tortoise, armadillos and more. We viewed Paleo-Indian pottery, arrowheads and lithic (stone) tools. We viewed life size dioramas of Florida’s ancient people at work and leisure beside the shores of a landscape that looked like Manasota Key. These local Paleo-Native Americans were known as “the People of the Water” and flourished for thousands of years until contact with the Spanish in the 1500’s. Two hundred years later they had almost disappeared! 

A note of humor surprised us with the fossils. In a separate section we found an on-loan collection of fossil coprolites, one of which was in the Guinness Book of Records. Coprolites are fossil “poop”, and believe it or not, are scientifically valued for what they reveal about ancient animal diet.

Another room dealt with Florida’s physical formation through the geologic ages. It showed how Florida was originally part of Africa and the super continent of Gondwana. It was pulled apart during plate tectonic movement and stuck onto North America. There never were dinosaurs in Florida as it was under water during the age of dinosaurs. 

Moving on to the Bishop Planetarium, we relined in chairs gazing up at the blue dome ceiling soon transformed by digital magic into a starry night sky. It is in fact a 50-foot domed screen, which can simulate many aspects of the solar system, as well as can act as a movie screen. Narrated by Howard, a museum astronomer with great humor, we learned about telling planets from stars, how to recognize the constellations now visible: Scorpius, Sagittarius, Northern Cross and Tea Pot. We regretted not having time to view the other five Planetarium shows that day. 

We lunched across the street at the river front restaurant Pier 22, where we sat outside enjoying the breeze, ice tea and excellent sandwiches. Other excellent lunch options are nearby on Main Street. 

Back at the museum we interacted with an exhibit called “Noise.” Housed in its own soundproof room, whirling gizmos, hands on drums, bells,