Indiana Dinosaur Museum donates Greybull’s newest exhibit

Greybull Wyoming Museum’s collection grew by a fossilized dinosaur footprint, an Edmontosaurus skin impression and a pile of fossilized shark poop on Thursday thanks to a donation from Indiana Dinosaur Museum. 

Mark Tarner, who, along with his wife Julie, owns Indiana Dinosaur Museum in South Bend, Ind., was at the exhibit’s unveiling and shared his connections to the Greybull museum. Tarner said he had regularly visited the museum back when he just started out looking for fossils and dreaming of owning a museum. There he met Wanda Bond, who helped found the Greybull museum and volunteered there through 2019. 

“She’s the finest person I’ve met... She encouraged me. She speaks volumes for your community,” Tarner said. Twenty years later, Tarner did start his museum. Bond passed in 2022, before its debut. Tarner said he wished Bond had been able to see it. 

“We just wanted to be a part of the (Greybull) museum,” Tarner said. 

The exhibit donated to Greybull includes a theropod footprint trace fossil found in Utah from the Mesozoic area, a rare fossilized late Cretaceous skin impression from a duck-billed Edmontosaurus found north of Baker, Mont., and shark coprolite from off the coast of Florida estimated to be from the Miocene to Pliocene. When asked by an audience member how paleontologists knew the coprolite -- fossilized feces -- came from a shark, Tarner said simply, “Just look at it.”

Tarner comes out to Wyoming annually, with dig sites in Ten Sleep, Bridger, Mont. and Baker, Mont. His museum is three years old. 

Shaylah Spragg, manager at Greybull Wyoming Museum, thanked Tarner for the contribution and the community for its support of the museum over the years. 

“I hope this is the first thing we do together,” Tarner said. 

Greybull Wyoming Museum, at 325 Greybull Avenue, attached to the Greybull library, is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.