FINALLY, HERE’S A MUSEUM YOUR KIDS WILL GIVE A CRAP ABOUT

The Poozeum, which opened early in 2024 in Williams, Arizona, is devoted to the study of coprolites—fancy paleontology speak for fossilized dinosaur droppings.

Like most things associated with dinosaurs, some of these poops are huge: one, dubbed the “Barnum,” is a twenty-pound monster deposited by a Tyrannosaurus rex in South Dakota’s Hell Creek Formation around sixty-five million years ago.

This astounding specimen is just one piece of the Poozeum’s comprehensive collection of Cretaceous caca. Samples gathered from around the world and put on display can be traced to a variety of prehistoric animals and often feature various “inclusions”—bits of bone and teeth from whatever happened to be on the delivering dino’s menu that day, for example. Some coprolites even have bite marks—proving, perhaps, that dogs didn’t invent the practice of eating poop.

Founded in 2014 by Guinness World Records coprolite collector George Frandsen as a virtual and sometimes traveling exhibit, the Poozeum has finally found a permanent seat in the Grand Canyon State—a hole in the ground that might have just looked like an enormous rest stop to a traveling Triceratops.

Jokes and puns aside, the study of coprolites is serious science, revealing much about how dinosaurs lived and what they ate. And while the Poozeum isn’t above bathroom humor—one exhibit shows a T. rex squatting on a giant toilet— the free museum is highly educational, with thousands of authentic coprolites on display.

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