First look: Travel through 13.8 billion years at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi

They may have been dead for 65 million years, but the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi still appear to be scuffling in the brutal cycle of life.

Two skeletal Tyrannosauruses – one of them called Stan – are frozen in battle over the remains of a Triceratops. Sauropods crane their long necks, as if reaching for the topmost leaves of towering trees. A menacing fish's mouth is agape, a split second away from snapping its sharp teeth on a spindly-shelled turtle. The skies are dominated by Pterosaurs, peering for prey.

Two skeletal Tyrannosauruses battle over the remains of a Triceratops. Victor Besa / The National

This scenographic approach, devised with a storyteller’s sensibility, runs through the museum, which opens to visitors on Saturday. It tells a story that spans 13.8 billion years, crossing through time and space.

“A museum is about theatre,” says Phillip Manning, the new attraction's director of science. “You're telling a story. Every single object in this building tells a story. If we can aid the way you tell that story, wonderful.”

The museum instils wonder from its atrium, where the sauropod skeletons are displayed. While the exterior architecture – by Mecanoo – has long been the subject of fascination, rising in the Saadiyat Cultural District in shapes that echo rock formations, the interior is just as awe-inspiring. Sunlight streams through deep, pentagonal and square wells, illuminating the space naturally during the day. There is a cafe and gift shop by the atrium, the latter selling educational materials, children’s books and plush toys of dinosaurs and whales.

The atrium of the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi. Victor Besa / The National

The museum’s galleries are located below. The experience starts with the beginning of the universe, but before stepping into this cosmic genesis, visitors cross a space speckled with the stars in the night sky as it was on December 2, 1971 – when the UAE was founded.

Visitors then head into the Big Bang when, as the digital wall literature explains, “In a split second, the building blocks of all matter were formed.”

An embodiment of these early moments of the universe is the Murchison meteorite.

What initially seems like an unassuming piece