This is a cutaway architectural model of El Castillo, also known as Temple of Kukulcan, a Mesoamerican step-pyramid that dominates the center of the Chichen Itza archaeological site in the Mexican state of Yucatán. The building is more formally designated by archaeologists as Chichen Itza Structure 5B18. Built by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization sometime between the 8th and 12th centuries CE or AD, El Castillo served as a temple to the god Kukulkan, the Yucatec Maya Feathered Serpent deity closely related to the god Quetzalcoatl known to the Aztecs and other central Mexican cultures of the Postclassic period. The American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Mexico and Central America features the diverse art, architecture, and traditions of Mesoamerican pre-Columbian cultures through artifacts that span from 1200 BC to the early 1500s. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), located at Central Park West and 79th Street, comprises of 28 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library, across 2-million square feet. The collections contain over 33 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts. Founded in 1869, the museum opened in the original Victorian Gothic building designed by J. Wrey Mould in 1877. A southern expansion, a rusticated Richardsonian Romanesque by J. Cleveland Cady, extends 700 feet along West 77th Street and in 1936, John Russell Pope added the overscaled Beaux Arts entrance on Central Park West.