93 million years ago, prehistoric sea creatures swam in the coastal waters of what is now the Sannine Formation. This limestone deposit in northern Lebanon is a treasure trove of fossil specimens that paleontologists are learning more about each day.

This specimen is a fossil fish from the Sannine Formation which has been preserved in incredible detail!

The Sannine Formation is an incredible snapshot of this period of geologic history. The deposit holds an astounding variety of fossils in great detail, many of which include soft body preservation.

The Spinosaurus was an adept hunter, prowling land and waterways alike. You wouldn't want to come across this beast in the wild, with its elongated snout lined with dozens of conical teeth ready to crush its prey.

This specimen is one of these teeth, a pocket-sized fossil from a prehistoric Spinosaurus!

The Super Spinosaurus Pocket Fossil is a display box that contains a small, ~1/2"-1" fossil tooth, a folding informational card about the Spinosaurus, authenticity details, and a beautiful illustration of the prehistoric creature!

We wanted to put the most bang for your buck into this specimen. It's an all-in-one package that makes a great gift for kids, students, office parties, or just about anyone who loves learning about dinosaurs!

On May 25th, 1977, George Lucas' Star Wars premiered in theaters. The film was an instant success. Fans saw the movie multiple times, sometimes on the same day. Star Wars went on to become a global phenomenon and still remains the third highest-grossing film of all time (inflation-adjusted).

This specimen contains fragments of the fiberglass from Star Wars Episode IV's "Krayt Dragon" prop, the long serpentine skeleton C-3PO encounters soon after separating from R2-D2 on Tatooine.

To protect this fragile material, we've encased fragments of the original Krayt Dragon prop inside clear acrylic and affixed it to a sturdy black acrylic disc. Really, this is as Jawa-proof as it gets.

In 1929, Empire State Inc. announced its plans to construct the tallest building in existence—a state-of-the-art, 80-story office building in the heart of New York City. The Empire State Building exceeded even these grand ambitions. Coming in under budget and months ahead of schedule, the skyscraper was the first to rise over 100 stories, reigning as the tallest building in both its own city and the entire world for four decades.

On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber crashed between the 79th and 80th floors of the Empire State Building after its pilot Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith Jr. became disoriented in a thick fog. The plane wreckage tore through the limestone facade, one engine punching through the building’s south side and landing on another building below. The plane’s crew died instantly, while 11 others inside the building were also killed in the explosion and the fires that followed.

This specimen is a piece of the Empire State Building, a section of continuous stainless steel mullion that framed the windows of this magnificent structure. The material was dislodged during the collision in 1945 and was acquired at auction in 2021.

Amelia Earhart was a promising young pilot in 1932, but it was her solo transatlantic flight that brought her from a rising star to a figure of legend. Earhart was the first woman and only second pilot ever to across the Atlantic alone. After a dangerous crossing filled with storms, instrument trouble, and an engine fire, Earhart touched down near Derry, Northern Ireland, instantly becoming an aviation legend.

This specimen is a swatch fabric from Earhart's "Little Red Bus," the Lockheed Martin Vega 5B that she used to cross the Atlantic. With her landing in Derry, Earhart became the second person and first woman to cross the ocean flying solo.

The material comes to us by way of the Smithsonian. The institution purchased the plane in 1966 from the Franklin Institute. In the 1970s, restoration work began on the craft, and several sections of material were sold to private collectors.

Only a tiny amount of this material made it to the broader public in the form of small displays. It has taken us many years of patient collecting to acquire enough of these original displays to bring this specimen to the world.

Hematite is a hard and dense iron oxide compound that manifests a shining luster, with its dark blacks and browns accented by red flecks along its fissures. It's been used across human history both as fashioned tools and in its pigment form as ochre for cave painting.

This specimen is a Polished Botryoidal Hematite cluster. The rounded nodules present in the cluster owe their formation to small clumps of matter like sand the mineral formed around, giving the hematite its signature appearance.

Glyptodons were heavily armored mammals originating in the Pliocene Epoch three million years ago. With their interlocked osteoderms forming a massive shell, plus a spiked tail for use in combat, Glyptodons and Giant Armadillos flourished across the Americas up until just over 10,000 years ago when they were hunted by humans migrating into the continents. 

These specimens are fossilized scutes from the animal's shell, preserved over millions of years. They are incredible to hold in your hand!

For over 400 million years, Coelacanths have quietly stalked the world's oceans, living fossils that have remained nearly unchanged since the ancient Devonian Age of Fishes. They were thought extinct until a fresh specimen was discovered in 1938 by museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer.

Designed here at Mini Museum, this acacia wood cutting board features a laser-etched relief of a Coelacanth fossil. The 240,000,000-year-old fossil first appeared in the Fifth Edition Collection. We loved it so much that we 3D scanned the original fossil and crafted a design that would make for a wonderful conversation piece. The original specimen was recovered from the Middle Sankamena Formation in Madagascar. The board also comes with a large informational display card with a print of the original Coelacanth fossil.

Fossils are often the remains of a solitary creature, but sometimes they are dramatic scenes of our entire ecosystem, preserved forever. These mass mortality fossils form when a group of animals is wiped out in a cataclysm, an image of their sudden extinction but also a preservation of how they lived. 

These specimens are fossil snail clusters, preserving the remains of an Elimia tenera colony, dated to 48 million years ago. Found in the Green River Formation in Wyoming, these fossil snails are estimated to number in the billions.

Straight from the private apartment of Walt Disney, this specimen is a section of the red carpet of "the Cranberry Room," Walt Disney's secret apartment hidden over Main Street U.S.A.'s firehouse. Here, Walt and the Disney family could find privacy and rest in the heart of Disneyland.

For almost seven decades, families from across the world have traveled to Disneyland to experience the happiest place on Earth. When he set out to build this amusement park, Walt Disney sought to build a place where all people across all generations could come together to experience the nostalgia of the past and the promises of the future.

This specimen is a fragment of the original carpet installed in Walt Disney’s secret personal apartment. The carpet was replaced during a later renovation and the swatch was purchased by Mini Museum from the Van Eaton Galleries, the premier collection of early animation art and Disneyana memorabilia.

With its peak resting at 29,029 feet above sea level, Mount Everest (Nepali: Sagarmāthā सगरमाथा; Tibetan: Chomolungma ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ; Chinese: Zhumulangma 珠穆朗玛) is the tallest mountain in the world. Hundreds of mountaineers climb the mountain each year, facing altitude sickness, treacherous icefalls, and bone-chilling temperatures.

This specimen is a sample of climbing rope retrieved during a cleanup effort on Mount Everest. It first appeared as a specimen in the Fifth Edition Mini Museum and we're very excited to debut it as a solo specimen. It was procured directly by Hans Fex in Khumjung, Nepal in the summer of 2019.

Longer than the Great White Shark at a staggering 16 feet, the Xiphactinus was the alpha predator of the Late Cretaceous, ripping its prey apart with its fang-like teeth. These enormous fish were likely warm-blooded, an evolutionary adaptation needed to power their massive bodies.

This specimen is a fossilized Xiphactinus vertebra which measures around 1.5" - 3". It is estimated to be around 83,000,000 years old. Bones like these fit together in a long column along the staggering length of these aquatic beasts.

At the bottom of the sea floor, an ancient and almost alien environment is home to organisms who have never seen the sun. Instead, they survive off the belching sulfur of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, geologic formations where magma heats water and spews aquatic smoke. Chemosynthetic bacteria have evolved to take advantage of those chemicals and have been thriving in these strange biomes for billions of years. Some of the earliest fossils on record from such microorganisms date back 4.2 billion years.

This specimen is a geologic fragment of a prehistoric Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent that was recovered from Kidd Creek Mine in Ontario, Canada. It first appeared in the Fifth Edition of the Mini Museum and we're excited to bring it to the shop as a solo specimen. The material was donated by Glencore Canada's Kidd Operations. We are greatly indebted to Chief Geologist Peter Calloway's assistance in procuring this specimen.

Before humans dominated the Earth, we shared the planet with towering megafauna, among them the magnificent Woolly Rhinoceros. With massive bodies covered in thick hair, humped shoulders to carry their heavy heads, and a titanic horn that made them tower over the expansive steppe landscapes, woolly rhinos were a true sight to behold in the Pleistocene tundra.

This specimen is a piece of fossilized Woolly Rhinoceros bone. It was recovered from the North Sea, which once was a tundra between the British Isle and continental Europe before it flooded 8,000 years ago.

For decades, the Hollywood Sign has watched over Los Angeles from Mount Lee, a symbol of the filmmaking capital of the world. First built as the Hollywoodland Sign to advertise a housing development in 1923, the sign fell into disrepair and was entirely reconstructed in the 1970s to preserve it for generations to come.

This specimen consists of two samples from the original 1923 sign salvaged during the reconstruction: a piece of metal from the lettering, and a piece of wood from the support beams that held up the sign. The material was acquired from the private collection of a retired LA sound engineer. Together they stood alongside each other for over fifty years before being salvaged in the 1970s reconstruction effort.

Along the bank of Lake Superior at twilight, one can find an unusual rock: sodalite-syenite. At first, this stone appears as simple granite, but under the glow of a UV flashlight, it transforms into a ball speckled with glowing orange light.

These Shining Syenite specimens from Mini Museum come straight from the shoreline of Lake Superior and will glow with the same incredible light pictured here.

UV flashlights are also available so you can get the most out of these incredible pieces!

Note! A UV flashlight is not included in the bundle due to shipping restrictions! It must be added separately and can only ship to the US!