The main building is located on the north tract, along with the Butterfly House, Hideaway Woods, Farmyard, Sprout Cafe, Explore the Wild nature park, Catch the Wind, Dinosaur Trail, and the 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge Ellerbe Creek C.P.

Prior to the construction of the new main building in the early 1990s, the structures on the southern tract contained the bulk of the museum's exhibit space.

Richard (Dick) Wescott played a major role in the development and growth of the Museum of Life and Science during his tenure as director.

By the early 1970s, when the name was changed to the NC Museum of Life and Science, the little green hut on Murray Avenue had grown into a complex with several buildings housing a wide range of collections, artifacts, models, and murals, highlighted through a number of permanent exhibits.

This exhibit featured a representation of the Apollo 15 flight and included one of only four, extant Lunar Landing Modules (LEM), as well as a one-of-a- kind walk through the entire process of launching a rocket, designed specifically for blind visitors.

The museum also grew a significant collection of live animals and Dick began to collaborate with Jim Fowler and others, as they planned for the creation of an exhibit in and around the abandoned rock quarry across the street from the original complex.

The narrow gauge railroad, which remains operative, was the first step in building a unique exhibit of native species living in a natural habitat.

Aerospace includes a hands-on aerodynamics space, Launch Lab, that features paper airplane launchers and wind tunnels.

[2] BioQuest included the construction of new exhibit spaces: Magic Wings Butterfly House, Explore the Wild, Catch the Wind, and the Dinosaur Trail and Dig.

A 30-foot (9 m) interactive tower elevates oversized representations of seed pods of trees native to North Carolina and drops them demonstrating how wind affects their travel.

Long a local favorite, the original Prehistoric Trail featured a number of life-size plaster amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs set along a woodland path.

According to a 1965 pamphlet, the trail's original lineup featured a Seymouria, an Eryops, a Dimetrodon, an Araeoscelis, a Saltoposuchus, a Yaleosaurus, a Plateosaurus, and a Camptosaurus.

It features life size models of Albertosaurus, Styracosaurus, Troodon, Maiasaura, Stygimoloch, Alamosaurus, Leptoceratops, and Edmontonia.

[10] Visitors can explore a cave made from sandstone, change the flow of a 20-foot waterfall and splash in it, make towers, walls and arches of stone, and sculpt sand.