The Wyoming Dinosaurium Project is a museum in the making, and a fair question from anyone following it is simply: where are you now? Here is a plain summary of the four areas the work is divided into, and what each one means day to day.
In classrooms and libraries
The programme that reaches the most people needs no building at all. Our school and library visits put working palaeontologists in front of students across Wyoming, with real material to handle rather than photographs of it. For a lot of these students it is the first time the science has been presented as something people in their own state do for a living.
In the field
Our active excavations in Converse County run in partnership with regional universities, which gives students genuine quarry experience and gives the project trained hands. The eastern Wyoming badlands preserve the closing stretch of the Cretaceous, and every season adds to what comes out of that ground.
In the lab
Alongside the dinosaur work, the project is identifying and analysing rare prehistoric marine fossils from the Bighorn Basin, from the long stretch when a seaway covered the middle of the continent. It is a reminder that Wyoming palaeontology is not only about the animals that walked here.
The museum itself
The long-term goal is a state-of-the-art museum complex: somewhere the specimens found in Wyoming can be prepared, studied, stored and displayed in Wyoming, rather than shipped elsewhere. That matters scientifically, and it matters locally too, in visitors through the door and skilled jobs that do not currently exist here.
How you can help
This is a long project and it is built on support from people who want it to exist. If you would like to be part of it, you can make a donation, or get in touch about school visits, partnerships and volunteering.
