Museum of the Rockies

Getting tired of super slabbing it to put down lots of miles we decided to check out the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman and take a break.  We followed the signs and got off at the exit they said and went through miles and miles of construction and deep gravel to get there, like riding on ball bearings ontop of sand.  It was completely on the other end of town where it would have been shorter to take a different exit.  We did get to see the biggest and nicest REI I’ve ever seen though like the size of a super Walmart, crazy.

If you are into fossils, dinosaurs or natural history at all I highly recommend going if you are going through Montana, this place was awesome and had some fairly extensive and well done exhibits.  I’ve been to several natural history museums and was very impressed with the collections displayed at this one.  On top of the impressive fossil exhibits they also had a Living History Farm and exhibits on the human history as well with a Native American section and some nice examples of the horse drawn vehicles up through early autos.

They had several of these interesting sculptures that showed artist renderings of the fleshy side and the skeletal structure of the other half.

Honey dont move!  Theres something behind you!

They had a lot of T-Rex stuff, including the full skeleton out on the front lawn.  I had forgot that several specimens had been found in Montana.

Tyrannosaurus foot above and a full skeleton still in-situ below.

Yes that is the real skeleton!  They had a sign somewhere that mentioned how to tell the real fossils apart from the cast copies. You had to look at the serial number to tell which was which, if it ended in some letter that I cant remember now it was a cast otherwise real.  We were surprised just how many of these are in fact the real deal and not copies of things down in the vaults or from other museums.

Here you can see the difference between the cast and the real fossils.

Another fossil gator like the one we saw back at Fossil Butte National Monument.

Along with the top photo of the Triceratops sculpture they had an impressive array of skulls from many varieties and sizes of them.

Some of these must have been enormous!  One skull was nearly as long as my econo car.

Wow.  Not sure what this is, it was pretty crazy looking. It had bone criss crossing what looked like possible eye sockets as if it had some massive scarring.

Hey look a distant ancestor of my sister!  No really, she broke out a windshield with her noggin in a car crash and didnt even feel it. Before that we thought she was just stubborn 😉

These guys must have evolved into Finnish rock bands and Slipknot.

Stegosaurus plates and spikes

More Gators and things

Crazy reinforcing on a Dino tail. Dinosaurs did not drag their tails.

These guys would have been scary, you don’t want to ever run into one of these in a dark alley or even a well lit alley.    Wasn’t Sam Neil’s character in Jurassic Park who was obsessed with the Raptors from Montana?

Vicious little guys when they run in packs.

A fossilized embryo. Amazingly well preserved as well as the one below.

Its Nessie’s much meaner cousin!

Wow look at those teeth!

Huge fossilized Nautilus, looks like theres still some iridescence from the mother of pearl left.

Another Soft Shell Tortoise like we saw back in Wyoming.

Water scene reconstruction.