Fossil Museum in project

Rana sp., fossil frog, Miocene, China. Length about 9 centimeters.

Hello everybody!

Considering the fact that more and more amateur collector and palaeontology clubs appear, recently, public fossil collections disappear or become impossible to access anymore, being victim of disastrous management from certain people…

I am a motivated fossil amateur collector from more than thirty years now, I have an important project, and I am looking how to realize it!

I intend to create a Museum to have my extensive collection on display, so it could be seen by most people!

To do that, an existing building is needed, a big-size construction in a rather good state of preservation, for instance an ancient factory, abbey or hospital.

This building should have strong floors made of stone or concrete (fossils are heavy stuff) and very large basement to store a huge stock of unprepared material, it consists of about twenty to thirty tons of fossiliferous rocks.

I own certainly one million specimens of all sizes, belonging to some thousands different species. My collection is essentially based on fossil sharks, but to be didactic I own pieces from all taxonomical classes (from single-celled thru mammals including vegetals and invertebrates) from all geological periods (Precambrian thru Quaternary) and coming from five continents ! We can also add a very well-furnished geological library, and also hunting and preparation tools in quantity.

I’d like to convert this building into a « Geo-Pole », in fact a « School of Research and Initiation to Amateur Palaeontology », being entertaining and educative in the same time. Collection would be integrated in a whole, being combined with a library, chemical and mechanical preparation laboratory, multimedia lecture room, exhaustive internet website, shop being simultaneously a “trade room” to realize exchanges, sleeping rooms for scientists coming to study the material, and a pub/restaurant for eating and drinking possibilities...

If we have enough space, we should even have the possibility to organize on annual or pluri-annual basis some exchange or commercial Mineral and Fossil Shows. Other possibilities include palaeontological trips with specimen collecting and study purposes, enabling people to be guided on the Field, and to prepare and determine themselves the fossils they’ve found. Guiding schools, including the furnishing of didactical material (books, real samples) is another possibility.

This is a call launched to all those who would like to re-affect an ancient building, and who would like to boost tourism in their county! Such a museum should bring many visitors, induce an international notoriety to the county, (thanks to internet) should have a positive impact on restaurant-hotel sector, and could bring about one hundred exhibitors and some thousands visitors during one or more Mineral and Fossil shows organized during week ends…

It can be in Belgium, France, Quebec, Canada, USA, or any other English- or French speaking country.

I am wide open to any honest proposal…

Thanks by advance!

Phil “Fossil”