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Have Bones Will Travel mobile mini museum

I want to outfit a mobile museum of fossil replicas to bring to schools, libraries, etc. where children can hold, touch, feel, and pass them around

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Have Bones Will Travel mobile mini museum

Have Bones Will Travel mobile mini museum

Have Bones Will Travel mobile mini museum

Have Bones Will Travel mobile mini museum

Have Bones Will Travel mobile mini museum

I want to outfit a mobile museum of fossil replicas to bring to schools, libraries, etc. where children can hold, touch, feel, and pass them around

I want to outfit a mobile museum of fossil replicas to bring to schools, libraries, etc. where children can hold, touch, feel, and pass them around

I want to outfit a mobile museum of fossil replicas to bring to schools, libraries, etc. where children can hold, touch, feel, and pass them around

I want to outfit a mobile museum of fossil replicas to bring to schools, libraries, etc. where children can hold, touch, feel, and pass them around

James Burnes
James Burnes
James Burnes
James Burnes
1 Campaign |
Norman, United States
$2,323 USD 47 backers
116% of $2,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
Choose your Perk

Stuck on Learning

$5 USD
5 out of 200 of claimed

Magnetic Support

$10 USD
1 out of 50 of claimed

T-shirt

$25 USD
21 out of 25 of claimed

In Home Special

$100 USD
3 claimed

Choose a classroom

$500 USD
0 claimed
 

I grew up on a small farm in a small community called Fred, Tx. Go ahead, google earth it, the ZIP is 77616. I graduated with less than 60 classmates. We lived over 2 hours from the nearest natural history museum. I remember getting to go once as a child. And I loved it. When I was a research assistant at my previous University, I was lucky enough to have access to the collections of replicas and teaching casts in our vertebrate paleontology lab. I would take a box of assorted ones out to elementary schools to talk to the kids about dinosaurs, fossils, scientists, and whatever else their brains could come up with. They would pass around the teeth and fossil casts and "ooh" and "aah" about the size or argue about who would win in a fight between a T-rex and anything. 

I started getting Thank You letters from the kids in the smallest schools that I had visited. I got them from most places, but the percentage of ones that did not say "my teacher says we should thank you..." were coming from the tiniest schools that farthest away from the "local" museums. They were amazed at how big a shark's tooth could be, or that there was such a difference between Mammoth and Mastodon teeth. These kids, these excited kids were from towns like the one were I grew up. I have a few fossil replicas that I use now to do the same thing, but to make it really stellar and pack those small public libraries and tiny community schools I want more so I can do more, so I can share more. 

Cleaning around an fossilized brontothere tooth from the EoceneCleaning around an fossilized brontothere tooth from the Eocene

I am trying to start a mobile mini museum. Think of it as a bookmobile, but with casts of fossils. With between 30 and 50 pieces on hand to show and tell with kids of all ages and interested adults about what I study, what I have done and what I do. Mostly teeth and claws, but some scaled down skulls as well. I want to show kids how big the world is outside their town. Most of all I want to take the museum experience to the kids that cannot visit the museum, and since I don't have access to my old teaching tools, I had to figure out a way that I could get an exhibit together on my student stipend salary and my wife's teaching salary. It looked pretty hopeless, I have all the words I need to tell the stories, but getting the pieces into the hands of kids is worth more than any lecture or picture filled powerpoint. I want to take fossils from off their televisions and off the pages of books and magazines and let them experience the world of paleontology in 3D. After all, even if you make it to the museum, you can't touch all the exhibits.

More Field Work, looking for leaves.
More Field Work, looking for leaves.

This isn't a large project, but it has great potential. The funds are exactly what indiegogo is for--to get this thing established. The goal is only $2000, this covers the protective gear to carry the specimens in--two large padded cases for the larger things and a padded makeup case for things like mastodon teeth and sabre-toothed cat fangs. The replicas come from different companies and range in price from just under $10 to right at $50 for a scale skull model. After hundreds of hours scouring the internet and catalogs I have found several companies that make what I need. By assembling a collection from several places I have found the places to get the most bang for my buck. (prehistoricplanet.com is a big one) With just this tiny amount pledged by people like you I will be able to purchase 10 different mammal species teeth, 10 different dinosaur teeth, 6 claws, 5 skulls, and 4 large trilobites, as well as the padded cases to transport everything in. Now, picture those cases coming out at a local library summer reading program or in a small elementary school library, opening up, and each piece getting passed around and talked about among the kids that may or may not have ever been to a museum. 

I will be updating my blog with stories and pictures from every talk I do, it's a way for me to have a kind of e-journal about what this project becomes after it gets (hopefully) funded, so feel free stop by Paleo Porch blog link and leave a comment that you helped me out, and see how excited the kids are about the fossils! If everything goes well, I might show up in your town, and I would absolutely love to meet every single person that helps out. 

Any funding that exceeds the goal will just mean that many more fossils! 

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