We usually measure time with a clock or calendar. What can fossils, plants, meteorites, and animals tell us about the nature and complexity of time? About Time: Measuring the Natural World, the Yale Peabody Museum’s newest temporary exhibition, mines its extensive collections in pursuit of an answer.
The exhibition will run from October 2, 2026, through August 9, 2027. The press preview will take place Thursday, October 1 at 2 pm.
Each section of About Time uses the wonders of the Peabody to demonstrate the different ways time is marked in the natural world, taking us from the first moments in the history of the Solar System to the present day.
The Peabody’s collections span billions of years and many kinds of materials, but the scales and specificity of time vary widely. “This exhibition provides a fun opportunity to step back to consider the concept of time, and to practice looking closely to see what we can learn from observation,” said Kailen Rogers, associate director, exhibitions.
The exhibition invites visitors to consider the sweeping array of timescales represented in the museum, and the stories embedded in every object.
An introductory display of timepieces asks the viewer to explore the various ways humans have kept track of time. From 19th-century chronoscopes that used vibration to measure the speed of thought, to sundials from across the world, to hourglasses, clocks, and watches, the exhibition shows that humanity has long tried to harness, monitor, and describe time.
The Peabody is home to a collection of meteorites that fell in Pueblito de Allende in Chihuahua, Mexico on February 8, 1969. A selection of these will be on display.
Over 4,000 pounds of meteorites fell to Earth that day, offering an amazing volume of information. Scientists have dated the white specks found inside the meteorites to 4.6 billion years ago. Because no older objects from the Solar System have been identified, these specks are used to mark its birth.
And, yet, the thin black rind covering the meteorites, called the fusion crust, formed over mere seconds as they sped through our atmosphere, forever marking these objects’ appearance on Earth 57 years ago. These specimens offer a profound illustration of deep time juxtaposed against recent memory, and approximation with exactitude.
Another highlight of the exhibition is an unusual egg fossil that holds clues to a detailed sequence of events across millions of years, starting 50 million years ago with an egg cracking, meandering into geode formation, and ending with a curious 12-year-old girl in the 1930s.
In addition, About Time will use crinoids, relatives of sea stars and sea urchins, to demonstrate how fossil deposits preserve different kinds of information depending on how they form over time. Ginkgo trees exemplify the concept of living fossils, species that have largely gone unchanged over millions of years. Trout-lilies in the Peabody’s botanical collections show how plants respond to environmental changes over time, and how repositories such as the Peabody help us track patterns. Crabs collected from Long Island Sound since the mid-1800s show how species living in a single region shift over time. And, finally, periodical cicadas appear every 17 years in swarms large enough to overwhelm predators.
“Some of the objects in our collections show us a clear picture of a moment millions of years ago, while others reveal patterns unfolding over centuries,” Rogers said.
In addition, Peabody exhibitions staff worked alongside New Haven Public School teachers to provide additional context. For example, they suggested adding pop culture references to give a sense of what was happening in the world at the time.
"What do Dolly the sheep, sliced bread, and the election of Abraham Lincoln have in common? They all coincide with the emergence of the 17-year cicadas,” Rogers said.
This exhibition idea formed a few years ago during the design process for the collection galleries in the renovated Peabody.
“As you move between galleries in the Peabody, you encounter fossils from the oceans from 500 million years ago, while later you may find a 4,000-year-old cookbook. Both can rightly be called ‘ancient,’ but their contexts are very different,” Rogers said.
About Time is the latest in a series of successful temporary exhibitions since the museum’s reopening in March 2024. The museum delved into the depth of human consciousness in Mind/Matter: The Neuroscience of Perception, Attention, and Memory and celebrated the Indigenous communities of the Caribbean in Caribbean Indigenous Resistance / Resistencia indígena del Caribe ¡Taíno Vive!, now on view at the Mattatuck Museum through October 4. About Time continues the museum’s efforts to tell meaningful and complex stories about the world that give us new ways to consider our humanity.
“We hope that every time you come to the Peabody, there is something new to explore and that you leave with a different perspective on the world around you,” said Yale Peabody Museum director David Skelly.