Tennessee’s T-Rex Ready at Cookeville's Highlands Prehistoric Museum (Chattanooga: fit in, price)

[JMT]

“Why travel to the Smithsonian in Washington DC when you can see the only TRex in the Southeast right here,” reasons world-renowned paleontologist, museum founder and curator Jerry Jacene. “This is the only three fingered T-Rex ever found, and on its bones you can see the battle scars of the last fight which probably brought him down.”

Read the full article about the Cookeville museum:

11/11/2009 - Tennessee’s T-Rex Ready For Visitors At Cookeville’s Highlands Prehistoric Museum - Travel - Chattanoogan.com

[TN Tin Man]

Originally Posted by JMT

“Why travel to the Smithsonian in Washington DC when you can see the only TRex in the Southeast right here,” reasons world-renowned paleontologist, museum founder and curator Jerry Jacene. “This is the only three fingered T-Rex ever found, and on its bones you can see the battle scars of the last fight which probably brought him down.”

Read the full article about the Cookeville museum:

11/11/2009 - Tennessee’s T-Rex Ready For Visitors At Cookeville’s Highlands Prehistoric Museum - Travel - Chattanoogan.com

More information.. Home Page (http://www.highlandsprehistoricmuseum.com/Home_Page.html - broken link)

[Mary_Moon]

I just wanted to bump this up and mention that tomorrow is the last day this museum will be open to the public in Cookeville. They are moving to Kingsport in East TN and won't re-open until late March at best. Hopefully, this will be a positive move for both the museum and Kingsport.

We visited today and while the facility isn't large, the quality of Mr. Jacene's artifacts is extremely impressive and well worth the price of admission. I was surprised to find the paleontologist himself giving a guided tour and letting kids actually touch the T-Rex! My 9 year old daughter has wanted to be a paleontologist since she was 4 and had a wonderful time today. Mr. Jacene's work area is open for viewing and you can see exactly how fossils are extricated from the rock layer. I've been to many museums with fossil and dinosaur displays over the past few years but nothing comes close to offering this kind of interaction with the guests.

[mbmouse]

Kingsport has been all a buzz about Mr. Jacene coming. He is planning to do some great work with the Gray fossil museum.

[jabogitlu]

Sounds amazing. I can't wait for it to come to Kingsport, so I can check it out!

[JMT]

Originally Posted by mbmouse

Kingsport has been all a buzz about Mr. Jacene coming. He is planning to do some great work with the Gray fossil museum.

I hope he'll do more advertising when he moves the museum to Kingsport. He didn't do one shred of advertising in Cookeville except a few press releases in the local paper. As a consequence, a lot of local people didn't know about the museum, and hardly anyone from the Nashville area knew about it. He needed to have hundreds of visitors a day in order for the museum to break even financially, and in a small town like Cookeville that would've been hard to do if no one knew about the place.

At any rate, it sounds like it'll be a better fit in Kingsport with the Gray fossil museum near by.