Pacific Museum of the Earth

British Columbia’s earth science museum boasts a 15-metre dinosaur skeleton, a vault of precious gems, and a tornado machine.

Established in 2003 at UBC’s Point Grey campus, the Pacific Museum of the Earth is the only museum of its kind in British Columbia and attracts more than 1,500 visitors a year.

Well known for its 80-million-year-old Lambeosauras skeleton, the PME now contains a secure precious minerals vault designed to showcase precious metals, gems and gem minerals, and rare and delicate mineral specimens. Additionally, the museum displays spectacular collections of minerals, rocks and fossils from around the world in the regular display cases. The museum serves as a valuable resource to both the University and the local community.

Fostering close ties with British Columbia’s schools and the geology and minerals industries, the PME offers tours for students, kindergarten through grade 12, and a teachers’ resource centre—a room attached to the museum which contains resources and materials intended to assist with teaching earth science in the classroom.

Originally established at UBC as the M.Y. Williams Geological Museum in the 1970s, the PME inherited collections from the Pacific Mineral Museum in downtown Vancouver in 2003 and was renamed to reflect its diverse exhibits. The Museum’s Endowment Fund was established with a gift of $200,000 from friends of the museum, Ross Beaty and the Pacific Mineral Museum Society, to provide permanent financial support to the museum.