Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum

Nine months from carcass off Jurong Island to skeleton in a gallery. The museum called it a record.

Go on a rainy weekend with children who have moved past "dinosaurs are big", and spend more time with the whale than with the sauropods. The three dinosaurs are the photo; Jubi Lee, a sperm whale found off Jurong Island, is the better Singapore story. The compromise is access: it is out at NUS, entry runs in timed sessions and the counter takes no cash, so book ahead and plan the bus.

The dinosaurs, briefly

Prince, Apollonia and Twinky are three diplodocid sauropods around 150 million years old, and they have been the star attraction since the museum opened at NUS in April 2015. Prince alone runs to about 27 metres. Say hello, take the picture, move on.

The whale

In July 2015 a dead female sperm whale, 10.6 metres long, was found floating off Jurong Island; the museum says she was the first confirmed sperm whale recorded in Singapore waters. Staff salvaged her, cleaned her and rebuilt her skeleton, and she was nicknamed Jubi Lee for the Jubilee year. Museum head Professor Peter Ng called the nine months from carcass to exhibit "a record time".

Her bones double as a report from the shipping lanes outside. A large wound near her tail is consistent with a ship strike, and her stomach held squid beaks and plastic. She was young, which makes the plastic harder to shrug off.

She isn't Singapore's first museum whale either. The museum's history notes describe a baleen whale stranded in Malacca in 1892, whose skeleton hung from the ceiling of the old Raffles Library and Museum on Stamford Road from 1907 until 1974, when it was presented to Malaysia; it now lives in Labuan. The upstairs Heritage Gallery picks up that thread, along with a section on Singapore's geology.

The gallery worth slowing down for

Downstairs, the Biodiversity Gallery holds almost 4,000 specimens focused on Southeast Asian nature, and it rewards anyone who scales their attention down. Look for a huge crocodile from Sungei Serangoon, live stick insects and scorpions, a dugong skeleton and a dinosaur thighbone you can actually touch. Displays change, so treat that as a flavour rather than a checklist.

How to do it well

Book a session: entry runs at 10am, 1pm and 4pm, and once you are in you can stay until closing, so the morning slot gives you the most museum for your ticket. It is closed on Mondays. Volunteers run free gallery tours of about an hour at weekends, in English and Mandarin, for up to ten people a group; sign up at the counter on the day, and know that tours depend on guides being free. Pay by card or NETS. The official route in is bus 96 from Clementi MRT, and lunch at NUS afterwards is the natural place to argue about mudskippers.

Good to know Open Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm (last admission 4.30pm), closed Mondays. Resident tickets are S$18 for adults and S$10 for children, booked through SISTIC or paid by card or NETS at the counter (no cash). The museum is at 2 Conservatory Drive, NUS; the official route is bus 96 from Clementi MRT.

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Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum | 2 Conservatory Drive, Singapore 117377 | Nearest MRT: Kent Ridge or Clementi