Museum
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
Museum
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
Museum
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.
Paleontology
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
Mastodon
"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
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
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
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
Geology
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
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
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
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