Meet the 11-year-old fossil hunter who opened his own museum at age 9
When you’ve been collecting fossils for as long as 11-year-old Anderson Taylor has–eventually you’re going to need somewhere to put them all. So naturally, he opened a museum.
The preteen just snagged the Guinness World Record for being the youngest male museum curator
Kayla McLean · CBC News
·
Listen to this article
Estimated 5 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
LISTEN | Meet the 11-year-old fossil hunter who opened his own museum at age 9:
As It Happens6:24Meet the 11-year-old fossil hunter who opened his own museum at age 9
When you’ve been collecting fossils for as long as 11-year-old Anderson Taylor has, eventually you’re going to need somewhere to put them all. Naturally, he opened a museum.
No, really. Head to the preteen’s hometown of Cambridge, Ill., and you’ll find his museum, proudly displaying a big sign his grandmother made for him out front: Cambridge Natural History Museum.
Some visitors, Taylor says, don’t believe him when they find out he’s the one running the place.
And that’s when he’ll proudly whip out his recently awarded Guinness World Record plaque.
“It says Anderson Taylor, as of August 8th … 2024 is the youngest male museum curator,” he told As It Happens guest host, Saroja Coehlo. Taylor says he was told there is no young female record holder with a curator designation at this time.
The plaque and honour, which he received last month, also shows his age: he opened the museum dedicated to fossils and natural history when he was just nine years and 340 days old.
Turns out this museum was years in the making.
Taylor’s passion for dinosaurs and fossils began at an age when most kids would struggle to say “Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
“When I was three years old, I was watching a show about dinosaurs and they were talking about some fossils,” said Taylor. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna go find a fossil,’ and I walked outside to my driveway, and essentially started looking around.”
Believe it or not, he actually found one that day: a crinoid fossil in his yard. And just like that, a paleontology obsession was born.
In the years that followed, Taylor continued building his fossil collection. Some specimens came from family trips, others were gifted to him on holidays, and some he and his friends discovered in the gravel playground at his school.
Eventually, his collection grew so large that, as Taylor puts it, his “mom wanted it out of the house.”
That’s when he began making plans to open a museum.
After striking a deal with the town, Taylor was able to use a municipally-owned building rent-free for a year and a half, giving him time to work toward purchasing the property. While CBC was unable to verify the purchase price, Taylor's GoFundMe page says that an estimated $50,000 was required to purchase and renovate the building.
Today, the museum has become a fixture in the Illinois town of roughly 2,000 people, drawing hundreds of visitors from near and far, along with community support and donations to Taylor’s collection of roughly 1,000 artifacts.
And there's a little bit of everything for everyone inside.
“We’ve got a bunch of Native American stuff, some gemstones, minerals, fossils, some taxidermy [animals].... We’ve got some insects,” Taylor says. “We got a whole bunch of stuff.”
But if you ask Taylor to pick a favourite, he’ll tell you its “probably the mastodon femur that we got from my mom’s old science teacher in elementary school.” The giant bone takes up more than half of one of the museum's glass cases.
For Taylor, the museum is about more than just showcasing his collection. It’s also a way to give back to the community that supported him.
“I want to teach them more about ancient life or other cool things, and maybe some other dinosaurs,” he said. “I … just want to share the stories and stuff of all the specimens that we have in the museum and just make the community more knowledgeable on the animals before us.”
These days, when he's not busy with school, Taylor spends his time giving tours and rattling off paleontology facts to the curious onlookers peering into the glass cases that house his collection.
The preteen even gives presentations to local school groups, both at the museum and out in the community.
WATCH | Youngest Person to Curate a Museum! | Guinness World Records:
As for what’s next? Taylor says he is thinking dino-sized, with plans to expand the museum to make room for his ever growing collection.
“We’re planning to add an … apartment upstairs,” said Taylor. “We’re running out of space in there so we’re going to have to maybe either move buildings or expand out back because there’s a big lot out back that we can use. So there are a lot of fun things planned.”
Even with his museum bursting at the seams, there’s still one fossil Taylor dreams of adding to his collection.
“I would hope to maybe have an actual full skeleton of a dinosaur or something,” said Taylor. “I think that would be pretty cool.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kayla McLean is a web journalist with CBC News in Toronto. She grew up in Brampton, Ont., and received her bachelor of arts in media production at Toronto Metropolitan University. Before joining CBC in 2024, she worked as a breaking news reporter at Global News Toronto — covering everything from crime, sports, festivals and politics. She also reported for Global News's current affairs show, The New Reality, covering stories with a focus on racial equality and climate justice. She also previously held positions as a chase producer and writer for CTV News Channel.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.