Our latest temporary exhibit, Science Up Close: Fantastic Fossils, is a special one for the Museum. Rather than leasing a traveling exhibition from a vendor, our exhibits department and paleontology divisions designed and built one from scratch! With more than a hundred fossils, casts and replicas from our collections, including some that had never been on public display before, the exhibition is a fresh, new look at the world of fossils.

The exhibit’s most unique feature is the working lab staffed with researchers from our vertebrate paleontology, invertebrate paleontology and paleobotany collections. The curators, collection managers, students and volunteers in the lab provide visitors a first-person experience of life as a paleontologist. They even join in virtually direct from the field!

It’s not often we get a front-row seat to the entire process of creating an exhibit, and so, we wanted to share a glimpse at what goes into moving fossils, creating a new lab for scientists and building an exhibit.

Take a peek behind the scenes and see some of the work that went into putting together Science Up Close: Fantastic Fossils. Then, come see the finished product in person and uncover the secrets of past life on Earth!

Fantastic Fossils exhibit