A constancy will be the ever-growing inventory of fine pictures of fine fossils that even the makers of this site drool over. Moreover, based on popular request, actually perpetual prodigious numbers of requests, the VFM will be adding a new section of high-resolution images intended for educational usage - keep an eye out.

We also decided, since we are after all a grass roots and ad hoc undertaking by an all-volunteer consortium, to let most sections be available as they are being built, revised, edited and augmented; this makes the site easier to build and edit, when all can see it as it evolves.

Cheers - the Webmaster

The Virtual Fossil Museum Mission

Considering that some 4 trillion species (extinct and extant) may have existed on Earth over the 4 1/2 billion years of geologic time, how remarkable it is that but one species, Homo sapiens, evolved to be truly sentient, with choice predominating over instinct in determining individual and collective behavior. Presuming that the theory of evolution holds universal, even in the immense cosmos envisioned by Carl Sagan, creatures like our selves are either unlikely or are too infrequent in the universe for us to ever discover. And yet, we humans have existed on this planet for barely a millionth of geological time and a fraction of a percent of the time that the extinct trilobites crawled the Paleozoic seas. Decent with modification, or evolution, was the mechanism leading to humans and all the other 4 trillion manifestations of life on earth. Decent with modification, in turn, is dependent on the diversity of life. The Virtual Fossil Museum is dedicated to that diversity.

The fossilmuseum.net is a virtual museum in the truest sense, having neither physical building nor specimen drawers. Its mission is to foster interest in science, generally, and in the life sciences and fossil collecting, particularly. The Virtual Fossil Museum provides an ever-expanding scientific and educational resource knowledge base of information associated with fossils. The museum's information is organized as shown in the navigation buttons above into the hyperlinked categories of: geological time, paleobiology, geologic history, fossil sites, tree of life, fossil galleries, and evolution with an extensive scientific glossary. These categories are inextricably linked, and the hyperlinks in the web site represent these linkages. The fossil record has and remains a key information source for understanding each of these areas of science.

The museum IS striving to unify the most relevant information in these categories, show information interconnections and present that information in a "fossil-centric manner", through the use of electronic pictures of fossils. It is a wonderful experience to visit the Smithsonian and view such impressive displays as the dinosaurs. But, there is no public access to the vast collection of fossils not on display. The virtual museum, on the other hand, can open all its specimen drawers for inspection, and use macro photography to show minute details. It can in some instances provide a more comprehensive display in some areas than is possibly in a physical museum.

The virtual museum can also concentrate on the areas where fossils are available to collectors. For example, trilobites are abundantly available, dinosaurs are not -- the museum will broadly represent trilobites.

e-mail: webmaster@fossilmuseum.net