For pure beauty in a dark room, little can beat the David Friend Hall at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.

This newly-renovated hall offers a jaw-dropping look at gems and minerals from all around the world. Pretty much every continent is represented here — there are wonders from Asia …

… Australia …

… Europe …

… Africa…

… South America …

… and North America:

China has some particularly remarkable mineral formations on display:

There are also many incredible specimens from the US and Canada …

… including glowing stalactites from Arizona…

… an ammolite (a fossilized shell) composed of aragonite from Southern Alberta …

… and a giant panel from Wyoming made up of a 50-year-old fossilized palm frond with dozens of fossilized fish:

This is a room where you spend far more time oohing and aahing than learning things — there’s nothing in this hall about how these wonders were formed — but if you step into a smaller, somewhat brighter room, you can find out a tiny bit more about how gems and minerals come into being. The display starts out with minerals from magmatic environments; these are rocks that form when molten rock material cools and crystalizes.

Really exciting things happen when fluids meet heat — these are rocks with hydrothermal origins:

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Metamorphic rocks — rocks that form from other rocks as a result of changes like pressure or temperature — tend to be a little less showy.

This room also gives you a look at fluorescent rocks, including calcite, gypsum, fluorite, and opal, which glow when hit by rays of UV light.

Yale also pays homage to its home state with several exhibit spaces dedicated to minerals from Connecticut.

And no exhibit of gems would be complete without jewels — but this is even more fitting at Yale, since its namesake, Elihu Yale, was a diamond merchant. There’s nothing here that can be traced back to Mr. Yale himself, but you’ll find jewels both uncut …

… and in their fabulous settings, including earrings of rubies and pearls from mid-nineteenth century India…

… a Tiffany necklace of sapphires and diamonds …

… a ring from Edwardian England of emeralds and diamonds …

… and a ruby and diamond stunner named “The Mandalay Princess”:

But my very favorite section of this exhibit was the section titled “Thumbnail Specimens,” which I called “the tinies.”

Truly no bigger than the top part of a finger, these little specimens are like tiny miniature worlds, dots of fascinating perfection.

I spent ages studying these itty-bitty beauties!