If you’re interested in fossils, dinosaurs digs, or art in general, then the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum is a must see. The scientific and educational institution houses everything from dinosaur bones to tracks of sea creatures.

“We’re one of the largest fossil museums in the country,” says museum owner, Joe Taylor.

The 15,000 square foot creationist museum displays fossils and reproductions of dinosaurs and other animal bones from all over the world.

“We’re a working museum. That’s why there are things around that aren’t finished and there’s student work out, like casts that aren’t finished. Some are, but it’s all interesting,” he says.

It all started when Taylor became interested in paleontology through his love of art.

“I can restore things, I can dig them up, I can find them and make reproductions of them…accurate casts and do research. I supply a lot of labs and individuals with bone fragments that are looking for soft tissue or D.N.A.,” he says. “Since we’re restoring someone else’s thing like this big mastodon skull in the back, we get a chance to research it and study it while we have it. We make a display out of it while it’s here.”

Taylor says people often send him photographs or call and say they found something.

“I get people sending me things and I’ll identify it…yeah, that’s a horse bone or a left front foot of a dinosaur,” Taylor says. “It’s all information. That’s what we are looking for is information. We can’t always come to a conclusion on it, but the more information we have from a broader spectrum, the more we can formulate a picture.”

They even do cryptozoology, which is the science of studying undiscovered creatures, such as Bigfoot.

“We’re not afraid of controversy so if someone says, ‘hey I got a human track down here in the limestone where there’s dinosaur tracks,’ we’re going to mold it and study it to see if we can tell what it is,” Taylor says.

The museum attracts people from all over the world and also offers school tours. They get thousands of students coming in during the school year.

“We get a lot of people that have driven several hundred miles to come here. Homeschoolers will drive 50 to 100 miles just to come and do a tour. We’ve had some television shows come in too,” Taylor says. “Somebody came in and said he was just at the Smithsonian, and that this is better, because he can get right up to the stuff.”

The museum is open Monday through Friday 9 AM – 5 PM. Taylor says on top of doing a few digs a year with his team, he will also continue to restore fossils. He says there is no point of digging things up if you’re not going to fix them up, and that’s what he continues to do.

“We’re looking at the past and what’s left of the past…bones and stones and things like that. All these things tell us something about the past and what’s buried out there. You wonder how did it get buried there and that’s the quest…how did this stuff get here,” Taylor says.