Lucy and I visited the Aurora Fossil Museum on a chilly day in February. Wet, cold and gray, but we had a great time delving into both museum and gravel pits in search of treasures from North Carolina’s distant past. We found quite a few, too—a handful of small sharks’ teeth, some impressive fossilized coral fragments, some small objects that might have been rib bones. Lucy made the best finds; a pair of Mako shark teeth, one of them completely intact!
Inside the museum we were impressed by the displays of fossils both from the Aurora pits and other sites worldwide; this is a tremendous collection amassed over decades, and we could sense the passion behind the effort and its results.
We recommend the Aurora Fossil Museum to anyone interested in our world’s past. It’s a little out of the way, but definitely worth the trip. Oh, and should you decide to come to this little town in the coastal hinterlands of North Carolina to visit the museum, be ready to get dirty—no visit to this remarkable place would be complete without digging up a few souvenirs to take home with you!
