Our Exhibits and Programs
The Time Vault
Get a hands-on look at fossils from the Cambrian through the Cenozoic with the Time Vault! Kids can handle real fossils and really touch history (with adult supervision, of course).
Summer Dig Program
A popular project that we would like to continue if we can raise the funds. We will do a small dig next Summer 2025, but it is a short one due to the absence of cash.
Every summer one lucky kid and one of their parents will go on a real-life paleontology dig to see what paleontology is like. An incredible opportunity to introduce the kids of Blue Earth to the physical world of nature.
This program is open to kids in the Blue Earth area of Southern Minnesota and each dig depends on the funding available to the museum. Please contact Jim Pollard if you’re interested in helping fund the museum in order to send a loved one on an educational trip of a lifetime!
(Example of a past program attendee with an Allosaurus bone in Glasgow, Montana)
Tyrannosaur Tracks
An incredible display from the Cretaceous! These prints were excavated from a 77 million year old fossilized riverbed. The riverbank had trees, with sand dunes beyond. Tyrannosaurs waited in this area for migrating hadrosaurs to arrive and then ambushed their prey - a kind of paleo-diner. It was a scene similar to an African watering hole where lions wait for migrating wildebeests to arrive.
Fluorescent Minerals
A collection of minerals that glow in the dark! Kids are given longwave UV lights to light up these specimens!
Bugs Bugs Bugs!
An incredible collection of insects from all over the world, including Titanus giganteus, the world's largest beetle!
The Cherney Bison Site
A bison herd, wolves and deer perished in a natural disaster 7,000 years ago near Coon Rapids, Minnesota. The Cherney Bison Site Exhibit features many of these specimens, and fundraising is underway to assemble a bison skeleton from bones collected during the 1991-2 dig.
White River Badlands
The White River fossil animals are found in the Badlands of South Dakota, Wyoming and Nebraska. This vast area is famous for its well preserved mammal fossils that date from the late Eocene to early Oligocene - 30 to 40 million years ago.
Antarctica; 270 Million Years Ago
Earth is the ultimate history book and geology is the language that it is written in. Read the fossils and minerals in our collection and understand the history of Antarctica when it was covered in rainforest 270 million years ago.
