Publicity photos may be used and reproduced for purposes that positively promote the Gray Fossil Site & Museum. Photo credit: Gray Fossil Site & Museum
Gray Fossil Site, as seen from above, shortly after discovery and prior to museum construction.
Museum entrance.
“The Watering Hole” brick water fountain designed and installed by Johnny Hagerman from General Shale Brick
Visitors step back in time (about 5 million years) to a Miocene Epoch exhibit hall.
Explore an ancient Miocene ecosystem and learn about a time when alligators roamed East Tennessee.
Articulated casts of tapir skeletons.
The exhibit halls feature touch-screen computer games, such as this Fossil Identification game.
It doesn’t end once the digging’s done! The laboratory exhibit walks visitors through the fossil preparation process.
Knowledgeable tour guides create positive experiences for visitors.
Many of the animals found at Gray Fossil Site can be seen in the Miocene Habitat on permanent display in the Wayne G. Basler Exhibit Hall.
The Field crew flips a large plaster jacket with a tapir inside.
Regular volunteers can be trained in field excavation. This volunteer crew digs in the Rhino Pit.
Preparator Shawn Haugrud discovers tapir toes in an excavation area.
All sediment removed from the pits goes through a wet-screening process to find micro-fossils.
Lab preparator Brian Compton works on teasing a rhino skull from a clay matrix.
Surveying is used to pinpoint a fossil’s location within the pit. Summer camp kids learn about surveying in a fossil scavenger hunt activity.
Campers find microscopic water bears (tardigrada) in the activity featured here.
The museum hosts a variety of professional development opportunities for science teachers. Here a group of teachers test a new stratigraphy activity, based on Gray Fossil Site, that they have helped develop for 4th
Everyone wants to take home their very own fossil. Plaster casting activities allow workshop attendees to create their own souvenir.
Science experiments teach kids that learning about geology can be fun!
During summer camps, kids the basics of cleaning and consolidating fossil finds.
A second red panda skeleton was unearthed at Gray Fossil Site in May 2012.
This reconstruction is only half of the massive hip bone from the mastodon currently being excavated.
Reconstructed lower mastodon jaw with Shawn Haugrud, Lab and Field Manager.