Over 200,000 specimens are curated in the geology collections, including 60 type and figured invertebrates, 6 fish types, and over 600 type and figured plant fossils. Also represented is a strong collection of Carboniferous fossils from the scientifically and nationally significant Mazon Creek and Rock Island areas of Illinois. The vertebrate paleontology collection is one of the best Late Quaternary mammal fossil collections (50,000+ specimens) in North America; it is especially rich in Pleistocene-aged fossils from the American Midwest. Rocks and minerals in the collection number over 6,700 specimens.
- Making a Giant Ground Sloth
- For the Changes! Exhibition, the Illinois State Museum replicated a Jefferson’s Giant Ground Sloth, an extinct Ice Age mammal.