Both Sydney and Melbourne have natural history museums - but which one's the best?

Both Australian Museum in Sydney and Melbourne Museum in the Victorian capital boast blockbuster attractions - from towering dino skeletons to taxidermied Phar Lap - but which city's museum deserves a spot on your bucket list? Our duelling experts make the case.

Mal Chenu: "Full of stuff the British didn't get around to stealing, AM boasts many galleries featuring First Nations peoples and knowledge."

In an era when youth and beauty are currency, it is worthwhile remembering that older things are sometimes better: trees, wine, whisky, leather boots, jeans, antiques, friendships, columnists.

I'm so old that I go for walks without counting my steps. I even eat my dessert without taking a pic and posting it first. Crazy? Sure. But age also begets wisdom, and an understanding that museums, and natural history museums in particular, are way cool.

Happily for my argument, this nation's coolest is also its oldest. The Australian Museum (AM) was founded in Sydney in 1827, 30-odd years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. It is the oldest natural history museum in Australia and the fifth-oldest in the world. AM is the OG.

AM's venerable heritage-listed buildings are classic Sydney sandstone, and one can easily imagine David Attenborough discussing the Eastern Australian Muttaburrasaurus from the Early Cretaceous backed by AM's august facade.

From its early mission as a "beautiful collection of Australian curiosities", AM has evolved into an internationally recognised institution with more than 21 million cultural and scientific objects.

Full of stuff the British didn't get around to stealing, AM boasts many galleries featuring First Nations peoples and knowledge, including Garrigarrang (Sea Country), which honours Australia's Salt Water People, and Wansolmoana, which explores the traditions of Pasifika communities.

The Surviving Australia exhibition will freak out jittery foreign visitors, with displays of redbacks, funnel webs, king browns, bull sharks and saltwater crocs, among others. Tell your guests that while giant wombats and fanged kangaroos are thought to be extinct, they should keep an eye out just in case.

AM is also renowned for its dinosaur skeleton exhibits, including the Tyrannosaurus rex donated by National Geographic, after it starred in the documentary T. Rex Autopsy. I'll have a bone to pick with Amy if she thinks Melbourne Museum's dino skeletons are better.

The Minerals Gallery rocks more than 1800 rare geological specimens, and you can wrap up your visit with a look at the coffin containing a 2200-year-old Egyptian mummy.

AM runs numerous temporary exhibitions, lectures and events. The Environmental Film Festival is showing from June 5-7, while the Bloodsuckers exhibition is a portrayal of the 30,000 species of bats, birds, leeches and insects that enjoy a bodily-fluid beverage, or a plasma pick-me-up.

Melbourne Museum presents itself as Australia's best just because it has the stuffed carcass of Phar Lap. What a hide! If fossils fuel your interest, Australian Museum is your natural selection.

There's only one true dinosaur rockstar. More charismatic than Rod, Mick or Keith, he's also bigger, 65 million years older and arguably hornier. His name is Horridus, and he's one helluva blast from the past. Dramatically spotlit and striking a swaggering pose, the world's completest and best-preserved triceratops sends fans wild at Melbourne Museum.

In his prehistoric prime, he weighed about 1000kg and looked like a living Lady Gaga costume, with beak, teeth, head frill and three horns. His 266-bone skeleton is 86 per cent intact, which is more than you can say for most human celebrities at his career stage.

It's all staged with epic attitude. Across seven galleries and an IMAX theatre, exhibits roar and soar into life, with lights, music and high-tech dialling up the drama. In Dinosaur Walk, 17 majestic beasts march through the middle of a gallery like a skeletal stampede.

Only a museum this big - it's the largest in the southern hemisphere - can house its own living forest, populated by birds, frogs, lizards and fish, waterfalls, ferns and lofty eucalypts. Forest Gallery shows how far we've come - in entertainment excellence as well as evolution.

Visiting exhibitions add extra showbiz sizzle. Last year it was Star Wars, rendered life-size in LEGO. After the dark empire comes the Roman Empire, with 180 statues, jewellery and art arrayed in movie set-style bathhouses, villas and arenas in Rome: Empire, Power, People. And this being Melbourne, there are nights at the museum, too. Look out for the June 6 adults-only Discoteca Italiana bash, plus Italian films and food running alongside the Rome exhibition.

Sydney has the seniority but make no bones about it - Melbourne's museum is the superior specimen.