Springfield eyed for Missouri's first large natural history museum

~ The Riverbluff Cave is yielding fossil treasures preserved since the cave was sealed off at least 55,000 years ago.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Southwest Missouri may be getting the state's first major natural history museum, thanks in part to an Ice Age cave that is drawing national attention for its treasure trove of fossils from an era when giant animals roamed the earth.

Plans for a $7.7 million Missouri Museum of Natural Sciences, possibly in Springfield's renascent downtown, are still in the early stages, organizers say. Capital campaigns to raise most of the money from private donors are still on the drawing board.

But a concrete step is expected in March with groundbreaking for a smaller interim building to display some key exhibits, including fossils from the largest bear species that ever lived and a 40-million-year-old whale.

The idea behind the museum is simple: the Ozarks and Missouri are rich in relics from billions of years ago to the last Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago, but those remains are mainly displayed out of state and overseas.

"Missouri has never had a [major] natural history museum and it deserves one," said Matt Forir, the Springfield-Greene County Parks naturalist who is a driving force behind the not-for-profit group backing the plan and will be executive director of the museum.

"Scientists come here all the time from around the world and take their specimens back with them. Museums in Chicago, Denver, England, have our specimens, our fossils, our minerals, because we don't have a museum for them," he said.

Marble Hill display

There are several collections of fossils and minerals on display at universities in Missouri, and Southeast Missouri has the Bollinger County Museum of Natural History in Marble Hill with about 4,000 square feet of exhibit space.

But Springfield's museum would be 21,000 square feet of exhibits not just on the region but the world. That would make it the state's first major natural history museum, according to the Association of Midwest Museums.

"This would be a gem not only for the Ozarks but for the state of Missouri," said Greene County Presiding Commissioner David Coonrod, who is president of the board of the not-for-profit group Natural History Museum of the Ozarks, founded in 2003 to push the project.

The museum plan has gained steam since with the help of an Ice Age cave.

Discovered accidentally five years ago on the outskirts of Springfield, Riverbluff Cave is slowly yielding fossil treasures preserved since it was sealed off at least 55,000 years ago.

National publicity, including from National Geographic and The Discovery Channel, has sparked scientific and local interest. Some scientists have dubbed it a national treasure for its richness of animal traces from the Pleistocene Epoch, an age of megafauna when mammoths, huge bears and giant armadillos roamed the Midwest.

"The cave opened up people's eyes to the fact that we had these animals in this area, that we have this natural history in this area," said Nicole Ryan, a board member of the museum group and operations director for Riverbluff Cave.

Springfield businessman David Harrison, another board member, said the cave helped generate interest in a natural history museum as well as yield specimens for its collection.

"If we had not had the cave as a focal point, we would not have had the opportunity to talk about the need for the museum," Harrison said.

The group expects groundbreaking in March for a 4,000-square-foot museum near the cave that will have exhibits from the cave and elsewhere. The museum, funded mainly by a federal grant, is expected to open this summer, Forir said.

But eyes are already on the next, larger phase that Forir says could become a reality within seven years.

The vision is for a museum where the first thing visitors see will be a full-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in a large central gallery, with a flying dinosaur suspended from a glass dome overhead.

The central gallery will also include a man-made grotto to show how caves form. Other halls opening to the left and right will feature regional exhibits ranging from dinosaurs to more recently extinct animals such as woolly mammoths, saber-tooth cats and giant ground sloths.

The building will cost $3.2 million, according to the group's business plan. Adding costs for exhibits, technology, operations and other items brings the total to $7.7 million. Annual operations would cost $85,200 and could be covered within three to five years by revenue from ticket sales, a coffee shop and gift shop.

The initial funding will come from grants, donations, a capital campaign, and possibly from a temporary local sales tax, if Greene County voters agree.