A new museum, the Southern Arizona Museum of Science & Technology, has opened its doors in Sierra Vista, in Cochise County. It is a natural history museum with fossils, minerals, meteorites, and live natural history exhibits. It is a museum unique in its kind, and the result of one man’s passion and dream of sharing his fossil collection with the world, curator Ron Hyde.
I recently had the opportunity to visit the new museum and meet Ron, who gave me a special tour of the collections. Ron became interested in paleontology at the age of five when he started collecting fossils. He holds a certificate in paleontology from the University of Alberta; two museum studies certificates from Smithsonian Institution and Harvard University; a Master of Education in Learning and Technology from Western Governors University; and a Bachelor of Science from Purdue University. Ron has collected fossils from places as far away as Hawaii and Finland.
His collection grew to the point beyond being housed at his home. He needed a museum. Ron has lived in the Sierra Vista area for more than thirty years and, in the past, unsuccessfully tried to persuade city leaders that this type of museum was needed.
Finally, in May 2024, the Southern Arizona Museum of Science & Technology opened, and in the first three months, they had over 3,000 visitors, including many children. The museum has a very active Facebook page, where Ron posts daily something new about the museum’s collections.
The museum is staffed completely by volunteers, many from the local Huachuca Mineral & Gem Club. The museum just received their 501-c (3) non-profit status. So far, it’s sustained by grant money, private donations, and mostly sales from books, t-shirts, and gift shop items. They have tables set up for the young ones to draw dinosaurs.
Museum Collections
Visitors are treated to a guided tour through the museum, a trip through the millennia, when Sierra Vista and southern Arizona were underwater, a swampy land, fertile for the dinosaurs and other sea creatures to roam – a completely different picture from the current desert environment. Several cabinets are full of fossils from past eras. Among them, corals, trilobites, and other marine fossils from the nearby Whetstone Mountains, many self-collected by Ron. A large ammonite is one of his favorite fossils and it’s exhibited along with a photo when Ron discovered it.
The fossil collections range in age from the Cambrian period to the Pleistocene, from about half a billion years ago to approximately 11,000 years old. There are Ice Age fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, camels, and sabertooth cats, along with an impressive fossil skull of an extinct crocodilian from the Eocene period fifty million years ago (mya). A poster shows the geologic time scale, 650 mya to present. There is also an archaeopteryx fossil, a transitional fossil with both reptile and bird features, first discovered in the 1860s.
But one thing brings joy to all visitors, especially children: being allowed to hold the large fossil eggs of the theropod dinosaur Therizinosaurus, discovered in the Gobi Desert around 2013, and experiencing how heavy they actually are. I was surprised too! Therizinosaurus lived during the Late Cretaceous period about seventy mya and had long claws and feathered bodies.
The museum’s mineral cases include specimens collected by miners, geologists, and hobby collectors from around Arizona. One case is completely devoted to specimens from Cochise County, including tourmalined quartz and aquamarine specimens from the nearby Huachuca Mountains. Pyrite, malachite, azurite, fluorite, and many other minerals from around Arizona and the world fill more cases.
In the second room, another favorite exhibit is the case with fluorescent minerals from Arizona, including Campbellite from Bisbee, calcium on Willemite from the Dragoon Mountains in Cochise County, and calcium-Willemite-fluorite from the Silver Bell Mine in Pima County, all which light-up to everyone’s amazement when the UV light is turned on. Two large fluorite and calcite boulders from Washington Camp, Arizona, south of Patagonia, in Santa Cruz County, sit on the floor and light-up blue and pink when the lights go out and the UV light is on them. These cases are on loan from the Huachuca Mineral & Gem Club.
Mammoth rib bones, teeth, an ivory tusk from Escapule Road in Sierra Vista, and fossil bones from a Camelops (a fossil camel extinct 11, 000 years ago) tell the fossil history of the area. A small cabinet exhibits pot shards and stone arrowheads from the ancient Hohokam period in Snaketown, Arizona, within the Gila River Indian community.
In the third and last room, a cabinet is full of meteorites from Arizona and around the world. In that same room, several small desert creatures live in glass cases, including an Arizona blonde tarantula and a horned toad, and give a glimpse of Arizona’s desert life.
Museum Special Events
The museum has offered several camps for the young ones, such as the Homeschooler Fieldtrip and the September Bug Camp, hosted by Chad Matthew Hamill, when young visitors got up-close with dozens of different types of live bugs, especially insects and arthropods of the desert.
October was National Dinosaur Month, and visitors of all ages could see some of the 1,764 dinosaur species which have been named, including real T. rex teeth, Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus bones, the footprints of Dilophosaurus and Grallator, and the cast skeletons of Psittacosaurus, Deinonychus, Jeholosaurus, and others.
The museum also holds field trips to nearby sites, such the Lehner Mammoth Kill Site, about twenty minutes away. These trips are announced on their Facebook page, so please follow them for updates.
Museum location
The Southern Arizona Museum of Science & Technology is located at 4341 South State Route 92, Suite B, in a little strip mall. It is open Wednesday through Friday 12 p.m to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The museum has been free to the public, although a $10 donation per adult, $5 per child, and $8 for seniors is kindly suggested. The museum recently officially became a Blue Star Museum, designated to museums that offer free museum admission for members of the military and their spouses. That’s great news, as the museum is very close to the U.S. Army’s Fort Huachuca.
I am very thankful to my friend and museum volunteer Jerry Glazman who arranged for this museum visit. The Southern Arizona Museum of Science & Technology is a great place to visit and learn about the area’s prehistoric creatures and minerals and support a great community effort. Visit them at www.southernarizonamuseum.org and Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/southernarizonamuseum
All photos © Helen Serras-Herman