Housed in a historic building with marble staircases, charming dioramas and painted mural walls. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales (macnconicet.gob.ar; 2-7pm) is a great outing for an hour or two. Kids will love the surprisingly lifelike mechanical dinosaurs and halls of dino bones and prehistoric animals discovered mostly in Buenos Aires (when the city excavated beneath Av. Corrientes for the Linea B subway tunnel) and other provinces of Argentina. The small spider exhibition complete with examples of their intricate webs is another hit, and the taxidermy and skeleton rooms are especially good.
The museum also has fascinating exhibits (in Spanish) detailing Argentina’s scientific achievements including a section on the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo. This human rights organization pioneered the use of a DNA bank to assist in finding children who were stolen from their "disappeared" parents during the military dictatorship and illegally adopted.
