Not every museum lets you get face-to-face with a dinosaur. At the Raymond M. Alf museum of paleontology, that is part of the experience.
Located on the campus of The Webb Schools on 1175 W Baseline Rd, Claremont, CA 91711. The museum may be smaller than many well-known institutions, but that is exactly what sets it apart. Visitors don’t just walk past exhibits; they are getting close enough to really appreciate them.
“Because we’re a smaller museum, we offer a chance to get up close to the fossils that you often can’t at larger museums,” museum director Andrew Farke said.
Inside, the museum tells the story of life on Earth through two exhibit halls filled with fossils, skeletons and ancient footprints. Dinosaurs tend to grab the most attention, especially for younger visitors.
“The dinosaurs are a really great way of attracting people towards the sciences,” said Gabriel Santos, director of visitor engagement and education.
Once people are drawn in, the museum gives them more to explore, from early life forms to mammals and trackways that show how ancient animals once moved across the planet.
What visitors might not realize is how much work happens before any fossil ever makes it into a display case.
“We go out into the field, we excavate, we discover, we bring them back to the museum,” collections manager Bailey Jorgensen said. “They go to the lab to be cleaned and repaired. They go to research to be studied and then finally they come to collection, where I am, and this is where they will live indefinitely.”
That full process, from discovery to display, is a big part of what makes the museum unique. Many of the fossils in the collection, which now totals more than 140,000 specimens, were actually found by students.
Through field expeditions known as “Peccary Trips,” students travel to fossil-rich areas and take part in real excavation work. Back on campus, they continue learning in labs and classrooms, sometimes even contributing to published research.
For museum staff, creating those opportunities matters just as much as what visitors see on display.
“We really want to continue our mission for providing to the rest of our community affordable and accessible education resources,” Santos said.
The Alf museum aims to help people understand the connection between the past and the present.
“Thinking about the history of our planet is all these different moments of time, and everything that’s here today has connections to things that were in the past, through evolution,” Farke said.
For those who visit, that connection becomes a little easier to see when the fossils are right in front of you.
