[11] In 1763, Johann Christian Senckenberg donated 95,000 guilders–his entire fortune–to establish a community hospital and promote scientific projects.

[15] The neo-baroque building[22] housing the Senckenberg Museum was erected between 1904 and 1907 by Ludwig Neher [de] outside of the center of Frankfurt in the same area as the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, which was founded in 1914.

[29][30] The Senckenberg Museum Frankfurt has a large collection of animal, plant[32] and geology[33] exhibits from every epoch of Earth's history.

Main attraction is a Diplodocus from Bone Cabin Quarry, Wyoming,[34][35] donated by the American Museum of Natural History on the occasion of the present museum building's inauguration on 13 October 1907,[17][36][37] The 18 m (59 ft) mounted skeleton with additions contains bones of three different sauropod genera (Diplodocus and closely related Apatosaurus and Barosaurus).

[56] Big public attractions also include the casts of Tyrannosaurus rex[d] and Diplodocus longus (in front of the museum), an Iguanodon, the crested Hadrosaur Parasaurolophus and an Oviraptor.

[35] Further casts or single bones:[35] A living reconstruction of the extinct dodo and many other stuffed birds are shown in a permanent exhibition in the upper level.

[62] The museum houses many originals from the nearby Messel pit,[63] Germany's first UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site,[64] among them a predecessor to the modern horse that lived about 50 million years ago and stood less than 60 cm (24 in) tall.

[71] Display collections full of stuffed animals are arranged in the upper levels; among other things one can see one of twenty existing examples of the quagga, which has been extinct since 1883.

[74] Unique in Europe is a cast of the famous Lucy,[e] an almost complete skeleton of the upright, 1 m (3 ft 3 in) tall, hominid Australopithecus afarensis.