Refurbished College Science Museum Offers Jurassic Sights

Visitors enter a damp, dimly lit room filled with stuffed birds, a mountain lion and a fox. Looming ominously above a glass case, which holds a preserved eagle and hawk, an allosaurus rears its skeletal head as if to watch its prey as they enter.

Such is the sight at the newly refurbished Life Science Museum at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. The museum, which reopened last month, was established in the early 1960s by former professor Richard “Doc” Tuller to give students and community members a firsthand look at wildlife and dinosaur fossils.

The pride of the vast collection of fossils, bones, stuffed animals and seashells is the black replica of the carnivorous allosaurus, donated to the college by a former student in 1966.

“This guy [the allosaurus] was the largest creature of his time,” said biology professor Ted Kinchloe, who estimates that the dinosaur lived more than 150 million years ago.

The allosaurus skeleton was fitted with a new head this summer after its original cranium was damaged in the Northridge earthquake. The new head, made possible through a donation from the campus’ Associated Students Organization, gave back to the animal its menacing grin.

“I don’t know that I would want to be strolling in a Jurassic [river] wash playing a flute within earshot of this guy,” Kinchloe joked, referring to the 28-foot-long juvenile dinosaur.

The museum is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays in Room 1711 of the Life Science Building.

Information: (818) 710-4289.