Why Museums?

"Museum collections provide the record of past research, and the baseline for future research."

More Mall Fossils

A commonly found and easily identifed part of a mammal skeleton is the head of the femur. This is visible in the Pacific mastodon femur below, as the large knob at the upper right end of the bone: The femoral head is a large hemispherical mass that generally sits on

Fossils at the Mall

Later this year we're going to open a new permanent exhibit at Western Science Center featuring Ice Age fossils from Riverside County. While the largest single fossil collection at WSC is from Diamond Valley Lake, we are the fossil repository for the entire county and hold collections from

Half a vertebra

As I've mentioned in prior posts, many of the Western Science Center's fossils were discovered during construction projects. Often the first indication that a fossil is present is when a bulldozer or other piece of machinery cuts through a bone, at which point the mitigation paleontologists

A museum of volunteers

This is the 5th in our monthly series of posts celebrating Western Science Center's 20th anniversary. The Western Science Center currently has 18 paid employees, the largest our staff has ever been. And yet, given our scope of research, our busy programming and field trip schedule, and our

Mammoths in the Desert

Western Science Center serves as a fossil repository for several state and federal agencies, including the National Park Service. Related to that responsibility, a couple of times a year we send a team under permit to Joshua Tree National Park to collect fossils that have naturally weathered out of the

Life in the Ancient Seas

Max’s Mobile Museum was designed from the outset to allow for rotating exhibits that could be changed out quickly. At last Saturday’s Inland Empire Science Festival we debuted our first new Mobile Museum exhibit since 2022, Life in the Ancient Seas. This exhibit was inspired by a temporary

Max's Mobile Museum

This is the 4th in our monthly series of posts celebrating Western Science Center's 20th anniversary. Western Science Center has an interesting challenge for a small museum. We are the only natural history museum in Riverside County, which is roughly the size of New Jersey and has more

Bag of Bones

Many of the fossils housed at Western Science Center were recovered by paleontology mitigation companies from construction projects. This is a common and convenient arrangement in California that results in many more fossils being saved. (I've worked as a paleontologist in other states that do not have California&

Pacific Incognitum - The Pacific Mastodon Story

This is the 3rd in our monthly series of posts celebrating Western Science Center's 20th anniversary. It was supposed to just be an exhibit upgrade. Last month I talked about the discovery of Max the Mastodon, and how he became the iconic specimen for the Western Science Center.

The Tuna's Tail

Before coming to the Western Science Center I worked at the Virginia Museum of Natural History as Curator of Paleontology. My primary field site during that time was the Carmel Church Quarry in eastern Virginia, a remarkable location with multiple fossiliferous beds spanning 60 million years of time. During my

The Discovery of Max

This is the 2nd in our monthly series of posts celebrating Western Science Center's 20th anniversary. By 1995 the multiyear Diamond Valley Lake construction project was well underway. Huge amounts of sediment had to be moved to both increase the reservoir's volume and to provide the

Paleontology

Harvey the Mammoth

Later this year Western Science Center will be opening a new permanent exhibit (more on that in a future post). One of the highlighted specimens in this exhibit will be the skull of Harvey the Mammoth. Like many of WSC's specimens, Harvey was discovered during a construction project,

Mastodon

Max's thunderous thighs

"Max", the holotype Pacific mastodon, got his name because of his size. Even before he was completely removed from the ground, it was clear that Max was one of the biggest mastodons ever found in California. And yet, we don't know exactly how big he was.

Museum

That belongs in a museum!

This year (2026) marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Western Science Center. To commemorate this event, each month I'll be doing one post that specifically related to some aspect of the museum's history. A lot of California politics and planning revolves around water.

Fossils

An intriguing tooth fragment

Shortly before the holidays, our curator Andrew McDonald and I were looking through one of our collections cabinets for a particular specimen from Murrieta, California. In the process we stumbled across a fragment of another tooth, recently prepared by a volunteer but not yet catalogued. Even though it was incomplete,

Geology

The Nine Sisters

Each December, Brett and I try to spend a few vacation days in the small California coastal town of Morro Bay. Morro Bay (the town) is named for Morro Bay (the bay), an estuary than runs parallel to the coast for about 6 km. Morro Bay is the only protected

Snails

Snails on the wing

In our current exhibit "Life in the Slow Lane" one of the displays features fossil snails recovered from Pleistocene sediments during the Diamond Valley Lake excavation. Of the roughly 100,000 fossils recovered from DVL, over 4,000 were snails. These were pretty much all very small freshwater

Geology

Dropstones in the tropics

Much of this text was originally published on my old blog “Updates from the Paleontology Lab“ on February 22, 2008. Western Science Center is located in a semi-arid basin in Southern California, a short drive from the Colorado and Mojave Deserts. It seems an odd place to spend much

Mastodon

Grizzly Ridge mastodon vertebra

As I mentioned last week, many of the Western Science Center's fossils are actually recovered by paleontology mitigation companies, thanks to California's robust protections for fossil resources. Most of these companies are highly skilled and professional and do a great job recovering the specimens and their

Paleontology

New whale collection

California is unusual among U.S. states in having relatively robust protections for fossil resources, even when they are not on public lands (most states have none at all). As part of the permitting process for real estate development, developers are supposed to provide for the collection and preservation of

Miocene

More Miocene fossils

Besides the proboscidean tooth I talked about last week, our recent excavation in the Miocene Cajon Valley Formation turned up other interesting remains. Because these sediments were deposited in a fast-flowing stream bed, we don't typically find skeletons. Most of the identifiable remains are isolated teeth, and

Paleontology

New Miocene tooth

Last Monday, several of our staff members visited a fossil locality on National Forest Service land in San Bernardino County that we've been excavating for a number of years under an NFS permit. The deposit exposes a conglomerate of the Cajon Valley Formation, which is middle Miocene in

Exhibits

Life in the Slow Lane

Tonight is the Members' Opening Reception for Western Science Center's new exhibit, Life in the Slow Lane. This is one of the most ambitious exhibits we've ever built at WSC, including more than 400 specimens, multiple videos and interactives, and live animal displays. We chose