The Canadian Museum of Nature’s national research and collections facility in Gatineau holds one of the biggest natural history collections in Canada.

On Sunday the facility was opened to the public for a once-a-year event, which showcases the millions of fossils, minerals, animal skeletons, dinosaur bones and both vertebrates and invertebrates.

“The collection is in this building and it requires the space of about five NHL hockey rinks to contain our 10 million plus specimens,” said Mark Graham, VP of collections.  

Thousands were attracted to the event, including six year old Elle, who is fascinated with science.

“I was just looking in the microscope at a rock. It had white and blue and red bacteria on it,” she said.

For those a little older, the big ticket item was the dinosaur collection.

“It’s funny last night we watched the Jurassic Park movie and we didn’t even know we were going to come here,” said Naomi Brooks.

With the recent release of Jurassic World, the latest movie from the Jurassic Park series, experts say many have come to see the dinosaur collection.

But Paleobiologist Jordan Moore warns - the movie is a bit of a stretch.

“They have a big mosasaur, one of those big marine reptiles in the movie, that was way oversized. They’ve got the flying reptiles, the terrasaurus attacking people, which we think, well we know they didn’t do that,” said Moore.

Some other highlights from the event included a real moon rock and meteorites on display, as well as insects and marine creatures preserved in jars.

“We have 50,000 jars of fishes that are in the collection and 37,000 jars of reptiles, said researcher Marie Helene Hubert.

The event is part of National Science and Technology Week.