Arts & Entertainment
America's Dinosaur History Just Lost a Famous Museum
Philadelphia, PA – If you grew up loving Jurassic Park, collecting dinosaur toys or staring at giant skeletons in museums, there is a story unfolding in Philadelphia that deserves your attention.
By Cameron Hayes · 2026-10-19T11:53:08.896Z
Philadelphia, PA – If you grew up loving Jurassic Park , collecting dinosaur toys or staring at giant skeletons in museums, there is a story unfolding in Philadelphia that deserves your attention.
One of the places that helped make dinosaurs famous in America has closed its doors to the public.
And this isn't some small museum with a few fossils.
This is the Academy of Natural Sciences, America's oldest natural science museum, home to roughly 19 million scientific specimens and part of the history of how Americans first came face to face with dinosaurs.
According to Drexel University, the Academy's public museum closed in September 2026 after years of falling attendance and increasing building costs. The university says it intends to protect the scientific collections and continue research.
But the closure raises a question that reaches far beyond Philadelphia.
How does a country that loves dinosaurs end up closing public access to one of the institutions that helped Americans discover them?
Before Jurassic Park, There Was Philadelphia Think about the first time you saw a dinosaur skeleton.
Maybe it was in a museum. Maybe it was on television. Maybe you were a kid who couldn't believe animals that enormous once walked the Earth.
Now imagine living in the 1800s.
There were no dinosaur movies. No computer generated creatures. No giant toy collections at Walmart.
Most Americans had never seen anything resembling a dinosaur skeleton.
Then, in 1858, workers discovered remarkable fossil bones in Haddonfield, New Jersey, just outside Philadelphia.
The animal became known as Hadrosaurus foulkii .
It was the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton discovered in North America.
That was a huge deal.
Before that discovery, scientists often had to imagine what dinosaurs looked like from scattered bones and teeth.
Suddenly, they had enough of an animal to begin understanding its body.
Philadelphia scientist Joseph Leidy studied the fossils and helped explain what had been found.
Ten years later, in 1868, the Academy of Natural Sciences put a mounted dinosaur skeleton on display.
It was the first mounted dinosaur skeleton exhibit in the world.
Read that again.
Long before Jurassic Park made dinosaurs a worldwide obsession, this Philadelphia institution was showing people what one could look like.
Visitors could stand in front of an enormous prehistoric creature and realize that animals unlike anything alive today once walked across North America.
That moment helped change how ordinary people understood the planet.
And it happened at the museum that is now closed to the public.
Meet One of America's Original Dinosaur Hunters If you've watched Jurassic Park , you probably remember Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist who spent his life digging up dinosaur bones.
America had real life fossil hunters long before Hollywood created that character.
One of the most famous was Edward Drinker Cope.
Cope was born in Philadelphia in 1840. As a young man, he began working with specimens at the Academy of Natural Sciences.
He studied under Joseph Leidy, the same scientist who helped explain the Haddonfield dinosaur.
That connection matters.
The Academy wasn't simply a building where people looked at fossils.
It was a place where the scientists who helped build American dinosaur research learned, worked and made discoveries.
Cope went on to become one of the most productive paleontologists in history.
He published roughly 1,400 scientific papers and described more than 1,000 species of animals.
He studied dinosaurs, ancient mammals, reptiles, fish and amphibians.
His work helped scientists understand prehistoric North America at a time when enormous parts of its fossil history were still being uncovered.
And his career became famous for something that sounds almost like a Hollywood movie.
The Bone Wars Were Real Cope was involved in one of the wildest rivalries in scientific history.
His opponent was Othniel Charles Marsh, another American paleontologist.
Their competition became known as the Bone Wars.
During the late 1800s, the two scientists raced to discover and describe prehistoric animals, especially fossils found across the American West.
They competed for discoveries, recognition and scientific influence.
Their rivalry became bitter, with accusations, public disputes and efforts to undermine each other's work.
But amid the conflict, their discoveries helped transform what scientists knew about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
Some of the best known dinosaurs in American paleontology became part of the scientific story that emerged from this era.
Cope wasn't a fictional dinosaur hunter.
He was one of the real scientists who helped create the field that later inspired generations of dinosaur fans.
And the Academy of Natural Sciences helped start his career.
Here's Where the History Gets Even Stranger Cope's relationship with the Academy eventually fell apart.
As he grew older, he had serious disagreements with other scientists and institutional leaders.
By 1895, Cope was facing financial trouble and began selling important fossil collections.
A major collection of fossil mammals went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Historical accounts indicate that the Academy did not bid on the collection because of longstanding disagreements with Cope.
Think about that.
A famous Philadelphia fossil hunter had built collections that could help future scientists study prehistoric animals.
Yet important parts of those collections ended up leaving Philadelphia.
That doesn't mean the specimens were lost to science. They continued to have value at another major research institution.
But it does show how decisions made by museums and their leaders can shape where scientific history ends up.
More than 130 years later, Philadelphia is again asking difficult questions about an institution tied to America's fossil history.
The circumstances are different, but the lesson is worth remembering.
What happens inside a scientific institution can affect generations of people who haven't even been born yet.
There Are 19 Million Reasons to Care The Academy isn't home to just a handful of dinosaur bones.
Its collections contain approximately 19 million specimens.
That includes fossils, insects, birds, fish, plants and other examples of life on Earth.
Some are millions of years old.
Others were collected during the early years of the United States.
The Academy's history includes scientific materials associated with Thomas Jefferson and bird specimens connected to John James Audubon.
These collections help scientists study extinct animals, changing environments, evolution and the history of North American wildlife.
And unlike a movie prop, a real fossil can still reveal new information long after it was discovered.
Scientists today can use technology that didn't exist when many of these specimens were collected.
That means something gathered in the 1800s could help answer a scientific question in 2026.
The value of these collections isn't just what scientists already know about them.
It's what future scientists might discover.
So Why Did the Museum Close? Drexel University announced the public museum's closure on Sept. 1, 2026.
The university cited declining attendance following the COVID 19 pandemic and rising costs associated with maintaining the building.
Drexel leadership says the decision is meant to protect the Academy's collections and research mission while it considers more sustainable ways to connect with the public.
But the announcement sparked backlash.
Protesters gathered outside the museum, and an online petition calling for public access to be preserved reportedly attracted more than 90,000 signatures.
Supporters have demanded more information about the Academy's future.
They want to know whether families will ever be able to return, whether children will still see its famous dinosaur exhibits and what public education will look like going forward.
There is an important distinction here.
The public museum has closed. That does not mean its 19 million specimens have disappeared.
Drexel says preserving the collections remains a priority, and there is no confirmed evidence that the specimens are being destroyed or discarded.
Scientific research and public museum access are also different things.
But protecting fossils in a collection and allowing children to experience them are not the same experience.
And that is why supporters are concerned.
Imagine Never Seeing a Dinosaur Skeleton in Person Think about how many scientists first became interested in dinosaurs because of something they saw as children.
Maybe it was a museum visit.
Maybe it was a giant skeleton towering above them.
Maybe it was realizing that a creature from millions of years ago had once lived on the same continent where they live today.
That experience can change a child's life.
The Academy helped create those moments for generations of families.
It also helped make those moments possible in museums across America by contributing to the early science behind dinosaur displays.
A child visiting the Academy could see the legacy of the Haddonfield dinosaur, learn about Joseph Leidy and discover how scientists like Edward Drinker Cope explored prehistoric life.
Those are real American stories.
They're stories about curiosity, competition, mistakes, discoveries and the people who helped us understand a world that existed before humans.
And they're stories that deserve to remain accessible.
The Question Every Dinosaur Fan Should Be Asking Nobody knows what Edward Drinker Cope would say about the Academy's closure today.
But we know what he spent his life doing.
He studied fossils, described ancient animals and helped build the scientific knowledge that later generations would use to understand dinosaurs.
We also know that the Academy helped shape his career and played a major role in bringing dinosaur science to the American public.
Now the public museum connected to that history is closed.
Its scientific collections remain under the Academy's care, and Drexel says it wants to protect them.
But the future of public access remains a central concern.
Americans spend billions of dollars on dinosaur movies, toys and entertainment. Yet one of the institutions that helped turn dinosaurs into a subject of public fascination has closed its museum doors.
That doesn't mean its history is gone.
It means the country faces a choice about how that history will be shared.
Because before dinosaurs became Hollywood stars, they were scientific mysteries.
And in Philadelphia, people helped solve some of those mysteries.
The question now is whether the next generation of American kids will get to stand in that same place and discover something amazing for themselves.