UW–Madison Geology Museum facts for kids
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| Type | Natural history museum |
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| Public transit access |  Metro Transit |
The UW–Madison Geology Museum (UWGM) is a cool place to explore rocks, fossils, and Earth's history! It's located in Weeks Hall on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. The museum focuses on showing exhibits, teaching people, and doing scientific research. Lots of people visit this museum, making it one of the most popular on campus. The best part? It's free to enter!
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Discover the Museum's Past
The museum started a long time ago, in the 1800s. For many years, it was in a building called Science Hall. Then, in the 1970s, Weeks Hall was built. The museum moved to its current home in 1981.
Explore Amazing Exhibits
The museum has almost 1,000 items on display! These items are spread across 66 exhibits in a large area. You can see major sections dedicated to rocks, minerals, and different kinds of fossils. There are also special displays about glaciers, meteorites, and ancient plants.
Here are some of the cool things you can find:
Fascinating Rocks and Minerals
- A beautiful example of a mineral called kermesite.
- Two huge pieces of copper that were moved by glaciers. Each one weighs hundreds of pounds!
- A display case with 85 different minerals from a special gift.
- A room where you can see rocks glow under blacklight. This shows how some rocks can fluorescence and phosphorescence.
- A model of a limestone cave you can walk through. It even has sound effects!
Incredible Fossils
- A large piece of ancient sea floor from the Cretaceous period in Texas. It has many clam shapes pressed into it.
- Shells from giant ancient creatures called cephalopods, named Endoceras, found right here in Wisconsin.
- A special fossil of a cephalopod called Actinoceras beloitense. This is a "type specimen," which means it's the main example scientists use for that species.
- A window where you can watch scientists clean vertebrate fossils. These fossils are found in the field and prepared for display or storage.
- Animals from the ancient Burgess Shale, like the early fish-like creature Pikaia. You can also see Haplophrentis and parts of the giant Anomalocaris.
- Several skeletons from the Cretaceous Niobrara chalk in Kansas:
- Hesperornis, an ancient swimming bird that had teeth!
- A piece of chalk with a shark called Squalicorax. You can see its teeth, backbone, and even some bones from its last meal.
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- A very well-preserved piece of a floating colony of Uintacrinus, which are like ancient sea lilies.
- A nearly complete skeleton of a mosasaur called Platecarpus, hanging from the ceiling. It has some interesting old injuries, like hurt ribs and arthritis in one flipper.
- A hanging copy of a pterosaur called Pteranodon, a flying reptile.
- Skeletons of other amazing ancient animals:
- The Captorhinus, a reptile from the Permian period.
- A skeleton of a duck-billed dinosaur called Edmontosaurus. This was the first dinosaur ever displayed in Wisconsin!
- The skeleton of an American mastodon, which was a relative of elephants from the Ice Age. This skeleton is made from bones of two different mastodons found in Wisconsin in the 1890s. One was found near a village called Boaz, so the whole skeleton was once known as the Boaz mastodon.
Earth's Ancient Life: Biosignatures
This exhibit shows the timeline of Earth and the signs that life left behind. You can see:
- A rock piece with debris from the Sudbury impact that happened 1.85 billion years ago.
- Stromatolites, which are layered rocks made by ancient microbes, from the Ordovician period in Wisconsin.
- Fossils of soft-bodied creatures, like the mysterious Grypania and an ancient worm from the Silurian age.
- A large Winogradsky column, which is a mini-ecosystem showing different types of bacteria.
Visitors from Space: Meteorites
- A big piece of the Canyon Diablo meteorite. This meteorite created the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona.
- Several smaller meteorites that fell in Wisconsin. Some are stony, and some are made of metal.
Museum Outreach and Fun Events
Every year, hundreds of school groups from all over Wisconsin visit the museum. Students who work at the museum lead these tours. Museum staff and students also visit schools to teach kids and their teachers about geology.
The museum also hosts special family events, like its yearly Open House. These events sometimes have a fun theme. For example, in 2006, the theme was pterosaurs. In 2009, it was about the Mazon Creek fossils, which include the famous Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium).
Discovering the Past: Museum Research
The museum's scientists have dug for fossils in many Western states. They have found many ocean fossils in the Late Cretaceous Niobrara Formation in Kansas. In Montana and South Dakota, they have found duck-billed, horned, and tyrannosaurid dinosaurs, plus some cool fish fossils.
Every summer, there's an ongoing dig in the Jurassic Morrison Formation in Wyoming. This dig has uncovered sauropod and theropod dinosaurs, along with other amazing ancient animals.
The museum also does research closer to home. For example, they study Pleistocene mammal fossils found in caves in the Midwestern United States.
Museum Collections: Hidden Treasures
Like most museums, the Geology Museum has many more specimens stored away than are on display. It holds most of the meteorites ever found in Wisconsin. It also has a huge collection of rocks and minerals gathered by professors and given by friends of the museum.
The museum's fossil collections include impressive finds from the White River Badlands and the Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation. They also have a remarkable collection of soft-bodied animals from the Silurian period, found near Waukesha.
