BYU Museum of Paleontology opens new exhibit

The BYU Museum of Paleontology is a hidden gem in BYU’s collection of museums.

The museum, located near the LaVell Edwards Stadium, recently renovated and opened its newest exhibit to visitors this month.

“We opened it this past week, and it has a lot of really awesome cretaceous dinosaurs from the middle, like middle and late Cretaceous as well as a bunch of dinosaurs from the centers over the ice age,” Jacob Frewin, a BYU paleontology student, said.

The museum hosts an impressive collection of animal bones from various time periods. Although the museum contains bones from other animals, there is a particular emphasis on dinosaurs.

“Here we mostly study dinosaurs because that’s like the most abundant thing,” Caleb Ummell, a BYU geology student, said.

BYU students Jacob Frewin and Caleb Ummell have enjoyed studying and working at the museum.

Frewin and Ummell said they have had numerous opportunities to visit fossil quarries across the state because they study geology and paleontology.

“We’ve been working out in Moab, Utah, to dig up dinosaurs from the early cretaceous and the Cedar Mountain Formation,” Frewin said.

The museum excavates, collects and researches dinosaur bones and has an impressive collection of bones.

“We have some incredible dinosaurs on display, some dinosaur skeletons that aren’t anywhere else in the world, like our utahraptor skeleton or allosaurus,” Frewin said.

Students and museum staff use a variety of tools to research, clean and put bones back together.

The museum even invites patrons to purchase a fossil or two from the vending machine near the entrance.

The museum is so focused on their theme, its staff can hardly contain their excitement for work each day.

“I start here and I’m like, okay, I like dinosaurs. Who can deny? Dinosaurs are cool,” Ummell said.

The research team at the BYU Museum of Paleontology is dedicated to researching all kinds of dinosaurs, no matter how big or small they may have been.