About
The work began, as it often does, with a single fossil. A reawakening in Washington state. A creek bank in Missouri. A man named Barry whose collection is worthy of a museum but had nowhere to go.
Paleoheritage is an emerging field, part geology, part conservation, part oral history. In Europe it goes by geoheritage, geoconservation. In Missouri it looks like a road cut, a creek bank, a bluff that could be bulldozed, washed away, or turned into a parking lot by next year.
Paleoheritage works on the principle that fossils, fossil sites, collections, and the human stories surrounding them are nonrenewable. Once gone, they are gone. Our job is to make sure that doesn't happen quietly.
Jon Porter has been collecting fossils in Missouri for decades. He is a board member of the Eastern Missouri Society for Paleontology and the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences, co-founder of the St. Louis Prehistoric Life Show, and the steward of the Lake Neosho fossil collection and website lakeneosho.org. He is also a member of the Mid-America Paleontology Society (MAPS), the Paleontological Society, and the Paleontological Research Institution.
Support the work at paleoheritage.org/donate
Paleoheritage is incorporated in Missouri as a nonprofit corporation. Our 501(c)(3) application is currently under review by the IRS. NTEE code A56: Natural History and Natural Science Museums.
All support goes toward documentation, stewardship, and advocacy for fossils and fossil sites.