Dinosaur Discovery Museum facts for kids
A mount of "Stan", a Tyrannosaurus rex cast that greets visitors to the museum.
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| Established | 2006 |
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| Location | 5608 10th Avenue, Kenosha, Wisconsin |
| Type | Paleontology, with a focus on theropods |
The Dinosaur Discovery Museum in Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States, is dedicated to the exploration and explication of the relationship between modern birds and ancient carnivorous biped dinosaurs, the theropods, which include Carnotaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex, and Archaeopteryx. This link is especially well documented in the fossil record. The museum has the largest skeletal cast collection of theropods (meat-eating) dinosaurs in North America and is the only museum to focus a gallery specifically on the evolution of birds from non-avian dinosaurs, with a second smaller gallery focusing on "Little Clint", a three-year-old Tyrannosaurus uncovered by a dig conducted with the Carthage Institute of Paleontology.
The museum is located in the former post office (later the home of the Kenosha Public Museum building) and is a part of the Kenosha Public Museums system. The museum is unrelated to the Dinosaur Discovery Center in Maine.
Carthage Institute of Paleontology
The museum houses the Carthage Institute of Paleontology. The institute conducts field explorations with students from Carthage College and volunteers on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation. Fossils collected are kept at the museum and cleaned in the prep lab, as it is a federal repository. During the 2006 season, they discovered the remains of the youngest known Tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed "Little Clint", with more bones of Little Clint found in 2007, along with hadrosaur and ceratopsian bones.
History
The museum was initially closed during the 2020 Covid lockdown, then opened at 25% capacity, with extra cleaning precautions and social distancing measures in place. The museum closed again after it was damaged, during the Kenosha unrest in 2020, including damage to life size model dinosaurs outside the building.
Gallery
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The museum's facade.
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The skull of the Suchomimus mount.
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The skull of the Carnotaurus mount.
