Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum facts for kids
The Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum is a unique museum located in Crosbyton, Texas, United States. It first opened its doors in 1998. The museum's main goal is to show how fossils support the idea of God's creation. Its motto is "Digging up the facts of God's Creation: One fossil at a time."
The museum is quite large, like a big warehouse. Inside, you'll find a mix of real fossilized bones and amazing copies of ancient skeletons. Some of the cool replicas include a young Triceratops dinosaur, a huge mastodon skeleton, and the biggest leg bone ever found from a hadrosaur (a duck-billed dinosaur). You can also see the largest ice age bison skull in the world. Among the real bones on display is the head of a metoposaur, which was a type of ancient amphibian.
The museum also has its own team of fossil hunters, called the Mount Blanco fossil excavation team. They go on digs to find new fossils. They study these discoveries based on their creationist beliefs. The museum has worked with Carl Baugh from the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas. Together, they made copies of what some believed were human and dinosaur footprints found together. However, some experts have questioned if these prints were truly human and dinosaur tracks found side-by-side.
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Meet Joe Taylor
From Artist to Fossil Expert
The person who owns, directs, and curates the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum is Joe Taylor. He started out as an artist before becoming an expert in making detailed copies of ancient bones. Joe grew up on a farm in Crosbyton. He was raised in the Primitive Baptist church.
Before working with fossils, Joe was a commercial artist in Hollywood, California. He created art for many things, like billboards on the famous Sunset Strip. He also designed magazine pictures and the lettering for the original Mr. Pibb soda cans. Plus, he designed many album covers, and you can still see some of them in a room at the museum! Joe even made a giant copy, 10 feet by 40 feet, of the Waco, Texas Sudden Death Mammoth site. This amazing piece is now on display at the Mayborn Museum. In 1986, he painted a huge mural, 40 feet long and 10 feet high. It showed the history of Crosby County and is displayed at the nearby Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum.
The "Lone Star" Mastodon
A Giant Discovery
The largest mastodon skull ever recorded was found in February 2004. It was discovered in a gravel pit near La Grange, Texas. The skull was in many pieces. It took the museum a year and a half to get all the pieces and put them back together. This project cost $141,000. Once assembled, the skull weighed 700 pounds and was almost as big as a small car! It was named "Lone Star" and became the most important exhibit at the museum.
Why the Mastodon Was Sold
Before finding the "Lone Star" mastodon, Joe Taylor and his team had worked with another group. They were digging up an Allosaurus skeleton outside Dinosaur, Colorado, in 2001 and 2002. There was a disagreement about who contributed what to the Allosaurus project. This led to public arguments between the groups. In April 2004, they reached an agreement. Joe Taylor was to receive $124,843 from the sale of the Allosaurus. Both sides also agreed not to speak badly about each other.
However, over the next three years, Joe Taylor continued to talk negatively about the other group online. Because of this, he had to pay a fine of $136,000 in damages.
On January 20, 2008, the sheriff's department was preparing to force the sale of the museum to pay the fine. To prevent this, the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum decided to sell its most prized exhibit. The world's largest mastodon skull was auctioned off by Heritage Auctions in Dallas. It sold for $191,200. Joe Taylor received $128,000 from the sale. This money allowed the museum to stay open.
Unfortunately, Joe Taylor didn't receive all the money he was supposed to from the "Lone Star" mastodon sale. This meant the museum had to close for two years. It opened sometimes, but eventually, the last two museum workers had to leave. Joe Taylor was able to reopen the museum in 2010.
