Museum of the Rockies: Worth Visiting!

The Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman houses the largest collection of dinosaur remains in the United States and possesses the largest Tyrannosaurus skull ever discovered as well as the thigh bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex that contains soft-tissue remains.

Jack Horner, from Shelby, MT, is the Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, which is an affiliate of the Smithsonian. He served as the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park films, and even served as partial inspiration for one of the lead characters, Dr. Alan Grant. Within the paleontological community, Horner is best known for his work on the cutting edge of dinosaur growth research.

Because of a number of geological factors, Montana is the Gobi Desert (the source of many important fossil finds, including the first dinosaur eggs) of North America, a place where the fossil record is close to the surface but not eroded away. The first fossils were collected here in the 1850's and the search continues on to today.

In 1855, Ferndinand Vanderveer Hayden led a geological expedition to the Judith River region of Montana and discovered the first dinosaur teeth from the western part of the United States.

Barnum Brown led an expedition to the Hell Creek Formation of Southeastern Montana in 1902 and discovered and excavated the first documented remains of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Hell Creek digs produced extravagant quantities of fossils, enough to fill up whole train cars. As was common practice back then Brown's crews used controlled blasts of dynamite to remove the tons of rock covering their fossil discoveries. Everything was moved with horse-drawn carriages and pure man-power.

Significant finds are still going on around the state, like Leonardo, found along the Judith River.

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The museum is not just about dinosaurs:

The museum's collection about the physical and cultural history of the Rocky Mountains and the people and animals who have lived there is extensive. Its permanent exhibits include: Enduring Peoples, which chronicles the life of American Indians on the Northern Plains and near the Rocky Mountains; History of the Northern Rocky Mountain Region, whose inhabitants included Native Americans, fur traders, gold seekers, and white settlers from frontier days through World War II; Living History Farm, which includes the Tinsley House where costumed interpreters demonstrate life in a turn-of-the-century home; and the Taylor Planetarium, a 40 ft, 104-seat domed theater.

The Museum of the Rockies Photo Archive is a preservation and research collection of historical photography from the Northern Rockies Region of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. The Archive collects and preserves photographs from the late 1860s to the 1980's that document the people, places, industry, and events of the region.

The Photo Archive collection contains over 80,000 photographs, including the complete archives of several local and regional photographers. Image formats and processes represented in the collection include: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, numerous 19th and 20th century black and white print mediums, original negatives, and a small collection of motion picture film. Unfortunately, only a few are online.

Other exhibits in the museum include artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb and works of art by Picasso.

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