Welcome to the T Rex Museum

The NEW T Rex Museum Expedition Center is open 7 days a week by appointment only. Award winning museum now has even more fun, more fossils, more things to do, and you do not want to miss this.

Call for your time to 520-289-4149!

We are at a new location on the Westside near Saguaro National Park and located on 22 acres of Sonoran Desert Uplands and even have a SW Bosque or Riparian Area on the back third of our property. The rest pretty much looks like the Mongolian Gobi Desert after a rain, and that is why we have a new look for 2013. But we will soon have an even more spectacular exhibit for 2014 so read on.

All major credit cards taken. Located at 4125 N. Sassy Drive. Call 289-4149 with questions. (Just a few minutes NW of the AZ Desert Museum) Take Sandario to Manville Rd and Go West just 6 miles to Sassy Drive. Go left about 1 mile and you will see our Big Dinosaur Gates on the right hand side. Map it: http://maps.google.com/?q=4125 North Sassy Drive, Marana, AZ

What you will find at the New T Rex Museum Expedition Experience

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE ORIGINAL INDIAN JONES, THE DRAGONMAN, ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS…

If you went to an expedition to Mongolia in the 1920’s you would find an old building surrounded by smaller buildings and tents, many circular like the oldest constructed dwellings known to mankind, the yurt. It would be ramshackle but solid and built with whatever materials were on hand and lots of tin and wooden boxes. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would do the job. Science was the key and creature comforts came later.

This is the new Westside T Rex Museum Expedition Center designed for Fun For Children of All Ages. It’s not fancy, not modern, and totally in keeping with our theme of a real expedition 1920’s Mongolian fossil science center, but with a bit more civilization than Mr. Andrews had, and less guns & whips.

Yes he is the model for Indiana Jones in real life (come see the exhibit on him including real artifacts and photos and even a dinosaur egg found in the same strata where he made that remarkable discovery). On July 13, 1923, the party was the first in the world to discover dinosaur eggs. Come see what they looked like.

Come see one at the New T Rex Expedition Center and DO much more. How about a photo standing next to Metal and fiberglass replica of a full sized Tyrannosaurs bataar or the Asian T Rex. Or a full sized and very scary Raptor. Or lots of other Asian dinosaurs found near where Roy Chapman Andrews found his fossils in the 10 years of expeditions China and Mongolia. These exhibits are indoors and outdoors, and includes a ½ mile Tyrannosaurs Trail where you can walk through a real Riparian Area that is 20° cooler than in town and see lots of fossil displays and interactive exhibits. But be prepared for weather approaching what Mr. Andrews experienced. This so real that it is…well, real!

What will I get to see and do at the Expedition Center...

At our main expedition center you will get to participate in real fossil finding and preparation, and keep much of what you find to take home. There are many choices here and we will go over them, but we guarantee there is no place in North or South America where you can do all these activities at ANY Museum. Our General Admission is just $5 bucks per person. And then you get to pick which activities you want to do. Each activity that you choose to do is also $5 dollars, but keep reading. We have 8 different real fossil activities to do at the Expedition Center and that would cost you $50 for admission and activities, but there is a Summer Special. You can do the Raptor: 5 activities plus admission for just $20. A savings of $10. Or you can do the Deluxe T Rex and do all 8 activities with admission for just $30. So, $5, $20, or $30 is your choice. Here is an example of the most popular admission the Raptor with 5 activities:

1. After a short orientation and history of life on our planet with unique exhibits taken from our earlier museum, your family will start your search for fossils at our Prepared Fossil Sites found on almost 25 acres of lush desert, including a Lush Southwest Bosque or Riparian Area.

Weather is cooler earlier in the day so we open at 8 am. You will get to see real and cast fossils still in the ground as well as full size models or replicas of early and later ceretopsians like Protceratops and Triceratops, a Monolophosaurus Bone Bed, a Seven Foot hand of a sea Monster, an ancient flying reptiles fossilize head, and many other dinosaurs found in the Gobi Desert, or other locations, which make for great photo opportunities for your family, so bring your camera. WE ARE AN AWARD WINNING MUSEUM AND CONTINUE THAT TRADITION AT OUR NEW WEXPEDITION CENTER! Remember the old museum is closed and this is what we now offer.

2. Next we move on to our Sea Monster Fossil dig pits where it is 100% certain that fossils will be found here with possibilities being sharks teeth, crinoids, ammonites, trilobites, dino bone pieces or teeth, and so on. Keep up to 3 your choice.

3. Now we will retire to another shady area and cool down with a Gold, Mineral, and Gem Panning Mine in a real "Running water artificial stream" with a 100% chance of finding treasures. Everyone will get their own 'supply of 'treasure dirt' which includes maybe small flakes of gold, Herkimer diamonds, meteorites, semiprecious stones, and even rubies or emeralds, as well as some other surprises.

4. Moving on to “Treasure Mountain” we will next dig for real minerals, precious and semi precious stones and get to keep at least one. You can take just a minute or as long as you want until you find your first special treasure to take home.

5. The excitement continues as we will all go to still another area where we will get to Discover and prep real fossil fish or splitting fossil shale to find what is inside. You could find anything from a bird feather to a real fossil bird, plants, or insects. You again keep what you find. Many people like to take home a fish fossil to work on after they get home and that is allowed.

6. And finally you will get to find and then Break open a real geode from one of five mines we use world-wide. Inside you might find purple amethyst crystals, white calcite spires, or a wonderland of small crystals. And yes you get to take this home with you as well.

The T Rex Expedition Experience has been fine tuned over 10 years in really hostile conditions, and this will be a luxury adventure compared to those, so that it will only take an hour to hour and a half or so total time. Remember that this is a real expedition experience. You will be out in lush desert outdoors with temperature and weather variations. Prepare for it… It is very much like an expedition to Mongolia, only closer. And the water won’t make you sick.

We also have a nice little gift shop with everything from T Shirts and small fossils to books, DVD’s, rocks, games, and toys related to dinosaurs and natural history and all at great prices. We do accept all major credit cards.

Call 520 289-4149.

T Rex Museum Activity Center wins the “Official Best Children’s Museum in Arizona”
Dear Sam, We would like to feature the T Rex Museum Activity Center as the “Official Best Children’s Museum in Arizona” in a two-minute segment on our television special “The Official Best of Arizona - 2009” and on our internet travel site www.OfficialBestOf.com. The half-hour television program will air on NBC 12 KPNX Phoenix. Your highly regarded museum is our top choice for the state and we would be honored to have an experience of your caliber in our production. The “Official Best Of” solicits nominations for our www.OfficialBestOf.com website after we have searched online travel resources to determine which nominees will be named “best of.” No attraction can contact us for inclusion. Our selection process is rigorous with extensive research that requires positive reviews from a minimum of three independent sources. Our website receives over 75,000 visitors a month and traffic on our website surges after each TV airing of a new state. We are currently working our way through all 50 states.
T-Rex Museum Receives 2008 Best of Tucson Award
	U.S. Local Business Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement WASHINGTON D.C., November 13, 2008 -- T-Rex Museum has been selected for the 2008 Best of Tucson Award in the Museums category by the U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA). The USLBA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USLBA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community. Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2008 USLBA Award Program focused on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USLBA and data provided by third parties.

Coming in time for the Gem show in 2014 on KICKSTARTER: The Jurassic Jungle International Art Project. A traveling exhibit showing human dinosaur interaction via existing historic art, making other art like it, a CD, a Documentary on all Join us in the adventure of a lifetime exploring the vast array of Art made by our ancestors on the subject of the possibility of Interaction between Dinosaurs and Humans. Museums are where dinosaurs reside, but art is where dinosaurs live again. This project will bring them to life as never before imagined, except in Art. It appears that "dinosaur folklore and art" were created long before our modern science discovered the existence of dinosaurs. Through the art of ancient civilizations in both the Old and the New World we clearly testimony to that fact. These chroniclers or artists were either obsessed with fantasy creatures that we now call dinosaurs or perhaps dragons, or were simply observing what was going on around them. No one knows except them. But while they are gone their art lives on, though few have seen it. We want to change that and bring to everyone's attention. The idea of dinosaurs and humans ever eyeballing each other, much less riding, hunting, and being hunted, like these ancient art depictions, is of course usually placed in the realm of science fiction. Or art by James Gurney. Or look at the impact that the movie “Jurassic Park” had on our collective psyches. But what about dragons? Many peoples the world over believe they existed, or still do, and whole cultures were affected or impacted by this belief. Could the dragons really be dinosaurs our ancestors saw, that perhaps survived the extinction event at the KT boundary? Perhaps or perhaps not, most likely not. Evidence is a bit murky here, but we don’t want to tread on anyone’s beliefs. So we will include looking at them in this art project as well. Who doesn’t love a dragon love story like “Dragonheart?” To sum it up: cultures as old as 4500 years ago were creating artworks depicting dinosaurs and sometimes dinosaurs interacting with humans. While this seems unlikely based on current scientific consensus, the facts speak for themselves as you will see with your own eyes. "Follow the facts, not the dogma."