Marking a decade at its new home, the Shanghai Natural History Museum is going big with two blockbuster exhibitions spotlighting Chinese dinosaurs and early humans.

The dinosaur exhibition is set to open on May 18, International Museum Day, offering visitors a rare look at fossils unearthed from across China, including Henan, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia. Three massive skeletons have already been installed.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of fossils dating back hundreds of millions of years," said Ni Minjing, director of the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, which oversees the natural history museum.

The early humans exhibition, curated in collaboration with Fudan University and other research institutes, is also in preparation and will showcase fossil specimens once central to the museum's collection.

"We want to bring these artifacts to life with immersive storytelling and fresh perspectives," Ni said. "We hope to help visitors dive deep into the origin, development, and future of the Chinese people."

Beyond the anniversary exhibitions, the museum has broader ambitions. It plans to expand its collection to more than half a million items within the next five years.

This year, it plans to roll out more than 100 "one-square-meter museums" – compact, curated displays in schools, neighborhoods, and commercial centers across the city – to make science more accessible.

Now one of Shanghai's most visited cultural sites, the museum traces its roots to two 19th-century institutions: the Zikawei Museum, founded by French Jesuit Pierre Heude in 1868, and the Shanghai Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society, established by British scholars in 1874. The Shanghai Natural History Museum itself was formally established in 1956, drawing from both collections.

In 2015, it relocated from its longtime home on Yan'an Road E. to a striking new facility in Jing'an Sculpture Park. Today, the museum houses more than 290,000 specimens, with over 11,000 on public display – nearly 1,000 of them rare species from all seven continents.

Since the move, it has welcomed more than 19.42 million visitors, cementing its status as a cornerstone of Shanghai's scientific and cultural landscape.