Mesalands Dinosaur Museum

Tucumcari, New Mexico

Tucumcari is in Quay County, New Mexico, which happens to have one of the richest Mesozoic fossil beds on Earth. That partly explains why Mesalands Community College, also in Quay County, has its own dinosaur museum. The other reason is that Mesalands Community College has its own bronze foundry, enabling it to make and display bronze castings of its fossil stockpile, "the world's largest collection of bronze skeletons and fossils" according to the museum. The bronzes range from tiny dinosaur footprints to a 40-foot-long skeleton of the carnivore Torvosaurus, equal in size to T.rex, "the first in the world" to be put on display. Another benefit to bronze dinosaur bones: visitors are allowed to touch them. Also on exhibit at the museum are dinosaur eggs, Mammoth hair, human skulls, and a glass-walled paleontology lab where visitors can watch students clean all of the fossils that they dig up.