page_title: Creation Museum
section_title: Collection
hierarchical_section_title: Creation Museum / Collection
caption_attribution_description: English: A restored Allosaurus skeleton called "Ebenezer" on display at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky
context_page_description: The Creation Museum, located in Petersburg, Kentucky, United States, is operated by the Christian creation apologetics organization Answers in Genesis. It promotes a pseudoscientific, young Earth creationist explanation of the origin of the universe based on a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative in the Bible.
  The 75,000-square-foot museum cost US$27 million, raised through private donations, and opened on May 28, 2007. In addition to the main collection, the facility has a special effects theater, a planetarium, an Allosaurus skeleton, and an insect collection. As the headquarters of AiG, the museum has approximately 300 employees, and permanent employees must sign a statement of faith affirming their belief in AiG's principles.
  Reflecting young Earth creationist beliefs, the museum depicts humans and dinosaurs coexisting, portrays the Earth as approximately 6,000 years old, and disputes the theory of evolution. Scientists and educators have criticized the museum for misrepresenting science and expressed concerns that it could have a negative impact on science education.
context_section_description: The Creation Museum proper encompasses 75,000 square feet (7,000 m²). In its 78-seat planetarium, visitors view a presentation written by AiG's staff astrophysicist that presents creationist cosmologies as alternatives to the Big Bang theory of the origins of the Universe. In the 200-seat theater—which features special effects such as seats that vibrate and jets that spray the audience with mist—a film depicts two angelic beings who proclaim, "God loves science!" The museum also includes a restaurant and a medieval-themed gift shop. Outside the main structure are walking trails and a 5-acre (0.020 km²) lake.
  Patrick Marsh, who designed the Jaws and King Kong attractions at Universal Studios Florida, led the design of the exhibits for the Creation Museum. Kurt Wise was hired as scientific consultant and also played a major role in designing the exhibits, including the 52 professionally made videos. In 2009, AiG added an exhibit about natural selection, featuring models of finches, which Charles Darwin observed before proposing the theory of evolution in 1859. A 2013 expansion project added a lobby display suggesting that ancient stories of monsters and dragons may have been accounts of human encounters with dinosaurs. An animatronic character depicting a science professor in a research lab, dubbed "Dr. Crawley", tells visitors that, due to the variation and complexity of bug species, they could not have evolved naturally but must have been created by God.
  Dinosaurs are prominently featured in many areas of the museum. Prior to the museum's opening, Ham stated, "We're putting evolutionists on notice: We're taking the dinosaurs back... They're used to teach people that there's no God, and they're used to brainwash people. Evolutionists get very upset when we use dinosaurs." While some of the museum's dinosaur models are animatronic, many were sculpted from fiberglass by a taxidermist. Near the museum's lobby, a diorama depicts two ancient-age children playing near a stream, unmolested by nearby dinosaurs.
  Since 2014, the museum has displayed the skeleton of a 30-foot (9.1 m) long, 10-foot (3.0 m) wide Allosaurus dubbed "Ebenezer". Over half of the skeleton, including a nearly-complete 3 feet (0.91 m) long skull with 53 teeth, was recovered from the northern Colorado portion of Morrison Formation. The Elizabeth Streb Peroutka Foundation of Pasadena, Maryland, purchased the skeleton and donated it to the museum, and AiG paid an anonymous expert based in Utah to restore it before displaying it. The skeleton is presented as evidence of Noah's Flood.
  The museum is also critical of evolutionary theory that links dinosaurs with bird evolution. The second room of the Creation Museum, for example, displays a model prehistoric Utahraptor, stating that the species was featherless and had no connection to birds, referring to Genesis 1, which states that birds were created before the advent of land animals.
caption: "Ebenezer", the Allosaurus skeleton represents AiG's mission to "take the dinosaurs back [from the evolutionists]".[43]
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa", "Image ExifOffset": "46", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "690"}