Access the full episode details here.

George Frandsen (00:00)
Hey buddy, what is this? And he says, it’s a coprolite and it’s a fossilized poop. I’m like, you get out of here. That is magnificent.

Alyssa Fjeld (00:33)
Welcome back to Fossils in Fiction. We’ve got a great interview coming up for you today with an unexpected museum. First, we’re going to talk a little bit about some listener feedback from the most recent couple of paleo media exploits that have been happening. Travis, how are you today?

Travis Holland (00:46)
Hmm.

Yeah. Going well. I got out to see Rebirth just recently and I have thoughts. I got, I got a lot of thoughts, which, which I won’t necessarily go into in detail, but, I have written a review on our website under the blog category. So you can check that out at fossilsfiction.co and just click blog and it’s there.

Alyssa Fjeld (00:54)
Go on?

Travis Holland (01:10)
But we also went out on the socials and asked people for their opinion, as you mentioned, and both on Jurassic World: Rebirth and also on Walking With Dinosaurs. So we had two big pieces of paleo media released recently and yeah, it’s time to talk about it. So I would say that Rebirth is definitely mixed. I’ve seen a lot of people saying that this is, you know, the best Jurassic.

Jurassic Park/Jurassic World movie since the original. And then a lot of other people saying, no, it was not good. consistently, many people seem to think it was better than the last entry Dominion. Personally, I’m not even sure about that. Like there are some really great sequences here in this film and what, okay, let me start with the positives from my perspective. What I really liked about Jurassic.

World: Rebirth was there are some great sequences that seem to have come directly from The Lost World novel, which is a really interesting, well-written book. And there is so much in it that hasn’t been used in the whole franchise so far, like across all of these different, the one, our seven movies or six previously. So there, there have been seven movies, ⁓ a full animated cartoon series with five.

⁓ five seasons and they hadn’t yet mined The Lost World for all it was worth. I think they did a good job of the things that were born from The Lost World, but I saw a really good analogy saying that the thing about Rebirth is it’s quite disconnected. it very much feels like a video game in some ways. It’s like face this dinosaur in this environment and move on to the next level and

There’s not like an overarching story. And for me, that’s, that was, that was one of the major problems. I also, I don’t think this is a spoiler because it’s been in all the marketing and whatever else, but the mutant dinosaur, the Distortus Rex is just like, I didn’t mind the Indominus Rex in Jurassic world. I kind of thought it still is passable as a kind of.

hybrid dinosaur, right? It still feels like a dinosaur, even if it’s not a real, in air quotes, a real dinosaur. And same in some ways for the, Indoraptor in Fallen Kingdom. But the Distortus Rex just does not feel in any way like a dinosaur. And so I don’t think it has a role in a Jurassic world or Jurassic Park movie. I just can’t see it. ⁓ for me, it just completely throws the whole thing.

You never see it in a natural environment for a start. You only see it in the lab, the, in the surrounds of the lab. And then briefly, it kind of goes into, into a creek, but beyond that it’s, it’s not kind of in a natural environment. which is something that, you know, I think some of the best scenes of Jurassic in the Jurassic Park franchise have come from the interaction between the humans.

being in kind of what you feel like is a dinosaur’s environment, which is a forest or whatever it happens to be. In the Lost World, you get T. rexes chasing people through creeks, in the Lost World movie that is, and even the Indominus Rex, one of the coolest scenes is when the ACU goes out to chase down the Indominus in Jurassic World. And the Indominus uses its environment very well, but you just, you don’t get that with the Distortus It just feels out of place.

That’s my take. That’s my take. And so while there were some really cool scenes, I quite liked the dinosaur designs and I liked the fact that they mined the Lost World novel quite extensively. And it was pretty well cast. I have to say it was pretty well cast. We can talk about Jonathan Bailey in a minute, but yeah, it struggled. It struggled on a whole range of levels for me. That’s where it is.

Alyssa Fjeld (04:48)
I still need to see ⁓ it. I guess need is a strong word, but like my take is, right? Like with any franchise that’s been going for ages, like Final Destination or the Freddy franchise, the Jason franchise, eventually, like there’s like a dip of quality and then eventually there’s one that’s just so silly it goes back up and that one’s quite good. And I’m still waiting for that to happen with Jurassic Park, because it’s happened for all these other franchises, right? Like the Final Destination was like, okay, all right.

Travis Holland (05:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (05:15)
Yeah, I think you’ve circled back. It’s doing something. So maybe this is it.

Travis Holland (05:18)
Yeah. Yeah. And

there were moments of that in like they were, there were actually genuinely were moments like that for me in Rebirth There was some really cool moments, but it just, a lot of it was just unexplained and I don’t think it fits the lore that they’ve established, which is really annoying to me. I’m one of those nerds who’s like, this is a retcon. It doesn’t feel right. But anyway, so, so I asked for some, for some listener feedback on Rebirth as well.

Alyssa Fjeld (05:37)
Hmm.

Travis Holland (05:46)
we got, it was good, but could have been better. that was on, that was on Instagram. and then over on TikTok, we got Rebirth was amazing. Walking with dinosaurs was not, and we’ll get to Walking With Dinosaurs. and then also the comment, Rebirth was disappointing. Walking with dinosaurs was even worse. So people were not happy. Did I say on Twitter? I meant TikTok. ⁓ that’s where those comments came from over on our, over on our TikTok.

So yeah, Walking With Dinosaurs.

Alyssa Fjeld (06:09)
Yeah!

Well, I think, okay, this is another case of like this franchise was near and dear to me as like a young person. Like this, think is the general vibe for a lot of fans of Walking with Dinosaurs, the original series, which was this like BBC production that was done, I can’t remember, was this the 90s or the 2000s when this kind of came out? The original. And it was like,

Travis Holland (06:31)
Yeah, around then, yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (06:34)
Okay, they obviously do not have like a massive, massive budget. They’re doing a lot of like stock shoots. They’re using a lot of delicious practical puppet effects, which I thought were very good. I love a puppet. But it was one of the first documentaries to show dinosaurs as like living animals in a documentary style. So Prehistoric Planet ran because Walking With Dinosaurs walked. You know what I mean? So people were really excited to see it returning with higher budgets, with more modern dinosaur science.

Travis Holland (06:55)
Right. Yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (07:02)
And then I think the general consensus for a lot of us that have sat down and seen it is, huh, where are all of the scientists that you asked and consulted? Because you’re showing a lot of them on screen, but it’s not feeling like we’re getting a lot of the dinosaurs doing the things that they’re talking about. It’s not taking the same kinds of stances that we now know a dinosaur documentary like Prehistoric Planet can do.

Travis Holland (07:25)
Hmm. So again, a little bit like disconnected. Yeah. I think you’re right actually. Cause what I liked about Walking With Dinosaurs is those interviews with scientists in the field with paleo, whatever they happened to be, but it doesn’t feel like that necessarily informed what was happening in the stories that were, you know, set around the dinosaurs. And perhaps part of it was that there were these kind of, ⁓

Alyssa Fjeld (07:36)
Yeah.

Travis Holland (07:49)
almost novels or novellas around the characters, right? Whereas Prehistoric Planet was more your vignettes of life as opposed to their kind of whole life cycle over several months. I don’t know. The listener feedback was that on Instagram.

We had a comment, me and my son love it. The CGI was a little bit of a letdown, but loved the modern day elements. So, you know, again, that aspect worked really well. James Pascoe, one of our former guests said, my children loved it. He got to see how they got to see how the fossils are dug up. And then they asked so many questions. So again, that aspect is really coming to the fore. And I think this shows people are hungry for the science, right? They want to know what happens out there.

Alyssa Fjeld (08:28)
Yeah, like I think there is space for a documentary like this at the table, especially for people who want a touchstone for what a paleontologist is to not just be Ross from Friends. Begging you all once again to please, please pick someone else. It’s okay to use Ross, but there are so many others.

Travis Holland (08:44)
⁓ you know, and some other people said it was a sequel in name only, which I kind of don’t necessarily agree with. I think it was thematically on brand with, with the original, but, but they still enjoyed it and Torvosaurus rep made me happy. was the other comment we got on Instagram. yeah, wanting to see the Torvosaurus in there was great as well. So, I know your lab was excited for.

for Walking With Dinosaurs? What’s the general vibe there amongst the Monash researchers?

Alyssa Fjeld (09:10)
I think it was watched, but we didn’t end up having a watch party this time. I think the vibe became much more subdued after a couple of people with access to the early release had a look at it. yeah, it just didn’t feel like… I think people were hoping for something a little bit more tied into the nostalgia and the style of the original one. And then also just, I think they had been hoping for something a little bit more like Prehistoric Planet.

Travis Holland (09:29)
Yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (09:34)
And then I guess hearing from some of the people online, you know, there have been a couple of posts from people who’ve worked on this series saying, hey, we just didn’t feel like they really listened to us as consults. I think that sort of thing puts a damper on it because as a researcher, as somebody who is a paleontologist and a lot of people in our lab have been consults for large projects, it’s like, well, they do want the people that work with these larger organizations to have their voices heard and they want to support that.

kind of thing. But I wouldn’t say that anybody’s like directly said anything mean or nasty about it. The vibe has just been, yep, that was good. I mean, sure.

Travis Holland (10:11)
Yeah, I think, you know, there was, it’s also a problem potentially when there’s so much hype around these things and then it does feel okay. It’s interesting. It’s good, but it didn’t quite live up to the standards of, you know, Prehistoric Planet, for example, but

And, know, maybe if it wasn’t for Prehistoric Planet, it would have done, it would have done much better. Maybe the, the, you know, the hype was, was unfounded or unplaced or the hopes were kind of too high, but it was good. You know, Walking with Dinosaurs is good. I can, I think we can safely recommend it and look, can, I can still recommend Rebirth as well. think people should go and see that if you like watching dinosaurs, then go and see Rebirth. yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (10:51)
Like I think a lot of these, like think Walking with Dinosaurs, the original became such a staple of classrooms and educational outposts. And I think, you know, if you’re interested in educating young people about dinosaurs, then this is something to pay attention to, regardless of what opinion you end up having of it in the end. Check out what the popular franchises are doing with dinosaurs and check out what the documentary side of things is doing. Why not?

Travis Holland (11:11)
Yeah,

absolutely. And talking about making dinosaurs accessible and making science interesting and fun. and also in fact, a little bit of a tie back to Walking With Dinosaurs again, which you’ll see why once we get into the interview, the interview this week is a lot of fun. It’s also the reason for the title of the episode, which

⁓ isn’t being drawn from, from our feelings on Walking With Dinosaurs or Jurassic World: Rebirth, but is still a reference to one of Jeff Goldblum’s most famous lines from Jurassic Park. Of course that is one big pile of shit. And the interview is with George Frandsen from the Poozeum of all places.

Alyssa Fjeld (11:55)
If you’re wondering to yourself at home, is that what it sounds like? The answer is, yup, it sure is. It comes out of every living animal that we know of ⁓ in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And there’s at least one place on the world there you can go to visit and check out a wide variety of prehistoric and modern poos is my understanding. They’ve got coprolites as well as information about how things go to the bathroom today.

Travis Holland (12:19)
Yeah.

All sorts of things. George was such a good sport and I cannot wait to get to the Poozeum in one day in Arizona. So here’s the interview.

Travis Holland (12:31)
George, what sparked your initial fascination with coprolites and how did you take that from being a collector to a museum founder?

George Frandsen (12:40)
Well, that’s an interesting question. It’s ⁓ story as old as time. It’s ⁓ you know, love at first sight. almost 30 years ago, way before the internet became a thing. All I had were books on fossils and dinosaurs. And I found myself in the first year of college out at a rock and fossil shop in a town called Moab, Utah, in Eastern Utah. And I saw this piece in a case and it looked

I don’t know, was about yay big and it looked like kind of like a cat turd. And I said, you know, Hey buddy, what is this? And he says, it’s a coprolite and it’s a fossilized poop. I think he said something else, but it’s basically a fossilized poop. I’m like, you get out of here. That is magnificent. is, well, one that can’t be, I’ve never, in Utah, there are fossils everywhere.

been to museums and I’ve seen the books and there’s never been a coprolite. What is this thing? But this is so funny. It’s so gross. And it seems kind of fascinating. So I bought it and I took it to a professor at college who was teaching my first paleontology class, prehistoric life. And he was, he was a very smart paleontologist, very smart man.

He kind of took me under his wing, told me all about them, that they exist, that I could actually go and find them. And it just blew my mind. I’m like, this is the best thing ever. now I must find more. And so that’s what set it off over the course of like the next 17 to 20 years. I just kept collecting. I would go out and look for them and one piece was more incredible than the last piece or it was different shape.

or it had kind of a different story. thought, man, this is really neat. And then when the internet started taking hold and you could connect with people from all over the world who had the same hobbies and passions as you do, you could find people say like Lyme Regis England who look for fossils every day and they find coprolites and they have these great bits of pieces of food and stuff in them called inclusions.

So I was able to start growing the collection, not only from around my own area, but from all around the world, which was awesome. Then my collection had gotten pretty big and everybody made the joke that you must have the biggest collection in the world. I who else would even collect these? Nobody. So I guess it wouldn’t take much, right? And so got ahold of Guinness and I didn’t ever expect to hear back from them.

And they responded and said, yes, let’s do an official Guinness count. And so I said, yes, let’s do it. And they sent the requirements, which are lengthy, you could say. In short, has to be in a public place, be inspected by two paleontologists, videoed, every piece photographed, part of a database or a spreadsheet. And they have to go through each one. I don’t get to do it.

These other folks go through each one saying yay or nay to the pieces at the end of the time. It will be or won’t be and we’ll go on. And we got done with that day and they had gone through 1,277 pieces, which is a bunch of fossilized poo. But that was the whole day. These two guys, they did such an incredible job. They volunteered for it. They showed up.

They worked all day counting turds and, you know, really owe them a debt of gratitude. Okay. So that got me kind of some notoriety. became in the, it got in the book, actually it was in the 2017 Guinness world record book. And at the same time I had started a Poozeum website all about coprolites and fossilized poo because there was nowhere else that you could go to a website and that’s all you learn about. And.

So you have these two kind of converging things and then.

Museum started, this is what I didn’t expect, museum started reaching out saying, we saw you in Guinness or we heard about your collection. Can we borrow some pieces? I’m like, what an honor. Well, absolutely you can borrow some pieces. So started sending parts and pieces of the collection all over the United States for them to showcase. And also people wanted pictures, they wanted stories.

Travis Holland (16:25)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (16:39)
And it just got out there and I loved it because I had a totally different job. It’s not awesome. It was a good job and I’m grateful for it, but it wasn’t anything to do with this. And one day I just said, you know what? This is, people seem to really enjoy this collection when it travels somewhere. It’s, it’s a lot of fun. Maybe someday it could be a real permanent Poozeum instead of the collection moving around,

Travis Holland (16:48)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (17:03)
It’s in a permanent place and I can do it exactly the way I want it because a lot of the museums, well, they have their own way of displaying things and providing information. I just was happy they were doing it. And that’s what kicked off the goal to open a Poozeum saved and saved, got there and found the perfect place last year opened in May and first year, first season.

say I had 50,000 people through the Poozeum and it’s not that big a space. so long story, but here I am running the Poozeum in Williams, Arizona and it’s incredible.

Travis Holland (17:35)
That’s, that’s really cool. And 50,000 for a startup museum in a kind of smaller, smaller city. You know, that to me seems like an amazing number. that what you were expecting through the door or what did you kind of think or hope?

George Frandsen (17:52)
So I had two ideas of what would happen. Let me tell you, I know a lot of people and they all know I collect. When I started telling them that I was going to do this, the great majority said that was a dumb idea, that was stupid, don’t quit your job, don’t sell your house, don’t move across the country. Are you insane? You can do that someday. Do that someday. Don’t be foolish.

There’s probably less than five people who said, that’s an incredible idea. I support you and I do whatever I can to help. So I thought, well, we there’s this yin and yang. Maybe it’s going to be successful and I can do this every day. My passion every day, or it will fold it a month and I’ll know it pretty quick. People just won’t get it. They’ll think it’s stupid and it will die immediately.

And in that case, I’m still around. I can go back to loaning the pieces to museums and go back and work in another job. So it ended up being much more successful than I ever imagined. Media attention from all over the world is still getting it. I I get to be here speaking with you over a year on from when it opened. It’s been an incredible journey and one that I could never…

have hoped for.

Travis Holland (19:02)
So you mentioned you move across the country. Did you have a previous connection to Williams?

George Frandsen (19:07)
No. So I’m from Utah. It’s the state north of Arizona. And I knew I wanted to come back west in the mountains and deserts with rocks and features.

Travis Holland (19:10)
Mm-hmm.

feels like a good place for a fossil museum.

George Frandsen (19:19)
Yeah. And so we came over and we thought we want to be on Route 66, which is a very like quirky highway through the United States that is true Americana kind of stuff. And so we went through New Mexico, we went through Arizona and we got to Williams and we’ve never been through there. We’ve never been there before. And it was like a Hallmark movie. It was just…

It was at Christmas time and you know, Santa Claus is walking around, there’s tree, there’s lights, people give an outsider. There’s a train to the Polar Express. When every other town was kind of quiet, this was bustling full of families and kids and people enjoying this, you know, the winter weather. Most of Arizona is pretty hot. They don’t get winter weather. And we said, you know what? This is kind of quirky. It’s right on Route 66, right next to the Grand Canyon.

Travis Holland (20:04)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (20:04)
It brings in all the things that I was kind of looking for into one spot. And what I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find real estate. And so we just were patient. And then when the building that I’m in opened up, it’s this old saloon. It’s a very old Western cowboy town opened up had just been remodeled and the owner was got the concept and he was excited. It was born and.

Within two months quit, sold the house, packed up a truck and moved across country to come to Williams.

Travis Holland (20:35)
It sounds like you’ve been embraced by the town as you’ve embraced it yourself. Is that right?

George Frandsen (20:39)
The town has been incredible. Like I was very worried because you have this big sign that says Poo-seum. Some might find that offensive. And then my logo has this T-Rex, this cartoonish animated T-Rex on the toilet. And number one for fossilized number two. It is fast. It’s amazing. It’s great. It’s colorful. It’s, you know, the colors are so ugly on it. It’s…

Travis Holland (20:47)
Mm-hmm.

It’s a great logo. Yeah.

George Frandsen (21:02)
the worst yellows and worst greens and everything stuck together. Any art person would puke if they saw it. And I said, Hey, look Williams, I’m going to put this on your main drag through town. And they’re like, but sounds good. And it was great. They were supportive. And now when you drive through one of the first things when you get to the historic district of town is you see the big Poozeum sign and

The town’s been great. The visitor center sends people my way. lot of referrals. As I do with them, there’s a lot of other things to do in town, but everybody’s been incredible. I had a bunch of women from the church bring me pens that they had made with flowers on it as like a welcome gift into town. It took me. was just so kind and so nice that they would be like that.

Travis Holland (21:47)
That’s, that’s really great. Now you mentioned those, those Guinness world records. believe you hold one for the largest carnivorous coprolite. So the single largest coprolite and then another for the largest collection. So from one Guinness world record holder to another, well done on that. So is that right? and your, your largest carnivorous coprolite, is Barnum.

George Frandsen (21:59)
Yes.

Thank you.

That’s right, it’s named Barnum after P.T. Barnum, the circus man or the showman and Barnum Brown.

Travis Holland (22:10)
Yeah.

I think he’d like that. feel like

that’s something that, that PT Barnum would, would embrace. Yeah.

George Frandsen (22:19)
I think he’d love it. I think he would

take it with him and show it all around the world. And I think that would be incredible.

Travis Holland (22:25)
Tell us about that coprolite.

George Frandsen (22:27)
Oh, so Barnum is believed to be from a T-Rex dinosaur. It’s from the Hill Creek formation, uh, from South Dakota near a town called Buffalo, which is North of the Black Hills. It is 26 and a half inches long. So pretty big or 67.5 centimeters. And then it’s, uh, about 15, 16 centimeters wide or just over six inches wide and weighs over 20 pounds.

Travis Holland (22:31)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (22:52)
and that’s about 9.3 kilograms. And if you’re a fan of South Park, that’s 8.18 Courics If you know that episode, you know what I’m talking about.

Travis Holland (23:04)
I need to, I need to brush up. used to watch South Park years ago, but it’s fallen out of my rotation.

George Frandsen (23:10)
They have, I’ll just say they have a measuring contest and the unit of measure is Courics So, but it’s, an incredible piece. So it’s got chunks of bone, like chopped up bones throughout it that you can see on the surface. The side that’s in the jacket actually has more bones because that was the side eroding from the ground. And now it’s inside the jacket and it’s safe. The side that you see.

Travis Holland (23:13)
Right.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (23:36)
Still, you can see the bones and whatnot. so it shows that fast digestion. It showed that he was eating other animals, or it was, and its size and shape, it has a lot of circular layered chunks to it. And it has like this bend. And if you look at a lot of fossilized food, long ones, long skinny ones, they have this very neat kind of elbow to them.

And that’s either believed from turning it out, know, pushing it out or when it hits the mud or ground, it kind of bends over on itself due to its weight.

Travis Holland (24:08)
Now, was it Barnum that appeared recently in Walking with Dinosaurs?

George Frandsen (24:12)
Yes, yes, that is Barnum. Barnum is getting a little bit of fame. So they reached out and said, hey, this is our story we’re trying to tell. lot of these really great coprolites that are attributed to carnivorous dinosaurs are locked up in museums and we’re not able to have them brought to the field. Are you willing to bring Barnum to the field?

And I really wasn’t, that means putting it in a box, putting it on a plane. If you’ve ever watched people throw luggage on a plane, I was pretty nervous. And so I did some other extra things to make it safe and went up to Montana, took Barnum and the paleontologists were able to see it and video.

with it for that first episode, which is really great.

This lighting was good. It looked good. ⁓ Perfect.

Travis Holland (24:58)
Yeah, you know, was a perfect, perfect movie star.

I don’t know why, you know, Hollywood’s not putting more poos on screen like

George Frandsen (25:07)
Maybe it’s setting the foundation for future turds.

Travis Holland (25:11)
Exactly right. The foundation is important. know, it’s, you’ve got to have the, yeah, well, I was going to say you got to have the fiber, the fiber foundation in place.

George Frandsen (25:14)
It is. What they call it? Trailblazer.

Yes sir,

yes you do.

Travis Holland (25:23)
Now, I mean, this gets us to, you know, an interesting question. It is easy to make jokes about, about fossilized poo and feces and these kinds of things. So how do you, do you balance that scientific education approach with the kind of entertainment and the jokes? How do you do that?

George Frandsen (25:40)
Sure. So I’m the kind of learner, I’m a very visual learner and big blocks of text are really, they’re hard for me. I turn off instantly. It’s just no fun and I’ll walk away. So that was part of making this Poozium is that it had to be both. It had to be part natural history museum with the classic

Travis Holland (25:44)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (26:04)
labels that tell all about the piece, where it came from, size, importance of it. But it had to have something else that brought it together. So if you are not a reader like me, if you’re not one who’s going to go read every label in the museum, I had these carnival banners made, these antique vintage looking carnival banners from

This woman who specializes in that, she did an incredible job telling the story of these different varieties of coprolites in this very bright carnival way. And when people walk in, they see this. So one might say, dino bite. And it has this big jaw coming down on a turd, right?

Travis Holland (26:41)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (26:42)
You see that and you want to know what it’s about. Those those banners lead you into wanting to know more. So then they’ll go over there and they’ll research what’s going on more in that case, where I think a lot of the natural history museums maybe don’t provide that kind of that grab for their audience. ⁓ Turds with teeth. I’ve got one that says Betty Crocker’s emphasis on the croc and it’s a

Travis Holland (27:00)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (27:07)
big half a crocodile where the feces has been pushed up through the scutes and you can see bits of fish that it ate and you can identify what kind of fish it was. Of course, there’s Barnum in a banner and he’s being carried around by a big T-Rex and everybody says, why is it being carried around? I don’t know. I don’t know why it’s being carried around. It’s he’s proud of it, I guess. So, yeah, I think to learn.

Travis Holland (27:18)
All right.

George Frandsen (27:32)
And to get people excited about something, they’ve got to have fun. They have to be entertained. If you don’t do that, you will die. That concept will die. The business will die because no one will care. But if they come in and have fun and they can get this new concept that most of them have never heard about before, you’re going to do all right. they’re going to leave knowing something more than they did when they walked in.

Travis Holland (27:57)
what kind of reactions are you getting from the guests? Is there a lot of that pointing and giggling or, you know, are people genuinely coming to learn stuff?

George Frandsen (28:04)
So I get everything. I get students from the university up the way and around everywhere. And I get kids, I get families. Due to the proximity of the Grand Canyon, I get people from all over the world and they stop through Williams. So I have people from all different countries. lot of the information is translated into Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. Those are the highest.

Travis Holland (28:05)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (28:26)
percentage of languages that come through my door. So they can understand it through an app or a website. so kids, kids are incredible because I don’t know if they disappoint their parents or their parents are excited by it because they’ll have taken this home on the trip to the Grand Canyon. The whole family will either drive cross country or for a long time to see this beautiful site, this national park.

And all the kids can talk about is the Poozeum. They want to see fossilized poo and dinosaur poo. So they’ll come in and the kids will just be zipping around. they’re so excited and they’re greeted by a bronze statue of T-rex on a toilet. And they don’t, they can’t figure out why this bronze is like that. This statue, they’ve never seen a statue kind of like that. A giant poo, this big three and a half feet wide.

a skeleton of a small Tyrannosaur with a poo zipping out, out into the, you know, abyss. And it’s just something their brain has never seen. They’ve never comprehended this and they’re just so excited. And parents will say, you know, we went to, we’re going to the Grand Canyon, but all the kid could talk about was the Poozeum or the, they leave the Poozeum was their favorite thing. get a lot of emails.

and messages from folks that out of all the things they saw, the kids loved the Poozeum. And it’s so awesome for me. It’s a really great feeling that those young people care about it. Parents on the other hand, they can be a little more hesitant in opening up to the concepts. But once they do, I thought this was going to be a joke. I thought this was not going to be serious, but

This is actually very serious. You have a lot of great information here, but it’s fun and they get on board too. So honestly, I haven’t had very many people who come in and just say, this is terrible. And I think part of that is, you know what you’re walking into from the front of the museum. It gives you a good hint. So if you’re not into that kind of stuff, I think you stay away.

Travis Holland (30:16)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (30:22)
But so far I’ve been very lucky, I’ve been very fortunate that people of all demographics have enjoyed it. And that’s the other thing. The Poozeum is absolutely free. It’s not free on a day or certain times to certain people. It is free every day to every single person who wants to come through that door. And I think that’s important because there’s a lot of people out there that don’t have the money or wouldn’t

invest the money in something they didn’t understand or know about.

to go see, but since it’s free, they’ll give it a chance and they’ll come in and they’ll get that experience where they may never have gone to another museum because of the cost.

Travis Holland (30:58)
That’s a really interesting point actually. And I hadn’t expected that to be honest, because I guess you don’t usually see for private museums that free. You know, very often the public ones will be, or at least to locals. But yeah, you don’t very often see that for private museums. So that’s a really great philosophy.

George Frandsen (31:14)
Yeah, it was important to me because since the beginning, when I was loaning this collection out, everybody says, well, how much are you charging? Nothing. It’s incredible that these people want to display my hard work of putting this collection together and this information. All they have to pay is for shipping. They have to pay for insurance and give it a good home in a glass case. So I never made any money. I spent more money than

It’s comical amount of money on this endeavor. And I don’t know, just, it was important back then. And that’s why I wanted to carry through with my mission that anybody who wanted to see it is going to see it and they could learn and they can be inspired

Travis Holland (31:52)
I’m interested to know, you mentioned a little bit that you had studied paleontology, at university.

but then maybe your career went in a different direction. What’s been your involvement with scientific paleontology?

George Frandsen (32:03)
All right. So yes, first couple of years of college, I studied paleontology, other sciences, and I loved it. I thought it was incredible. Moved on to university at the University of Utah. And I discovered that my math skills were not up to par to continue in paleontology, biology, or geology. I think that people who can pass that math, incredible folks. I couldn’t, and I knew I couldn’t.

Travis Holland (32:26)
I mean, this is why I

do podcasting, right? Yeah.

George Frandsen (32:28)
That’s good. You do what you’re good at.

And so I ended up finishing with an archaeology anthropology degree. So I like old stuff and it was a, it was a good transition to learn about my state and the area around here and the peoples that live long ago before contact. that was, that was university got out, really couldn’t transcend.

Transition that into a paying job. I needed money. I needed a paycheck couldn’t do it So I ended up going a different path. I’ve done a bunch of different jobs not gonna bore you with those but At the same time I would take whatever opportunity I could get to continue learning I’d read research papers. I’d read books Movies YouTube I have connections still with different

Universities have got the opportunity to go out on digs and learn that process from an academic perspective. I also have friends that own property and there are lot of quarries and places you can go as a private person and pay a fee and look for fossils. So I’ve done that also. There’s also been some really great paleo people that have been great mentors.

that have partnered with me on papers and from discoveries that I have made or have come through my way that so it can get out in the world so people can see it. So it doesn’t just stay in the collection where no one sees it. The problem is, like I said, it’s private and a lot of the academic institutions or public institutions, the publications that

you know, publish those research papers frown on anything that’s not in the public domain. So a lot of this stuff, I have these incredible pieces, but they’ll never publish it on it because it’s not within the public realm. So instead, I’ll do videos I will publish in fossil newsletters and or I will donate the piece to a public museum.

and a paleontologist who I know is going to write on it. And so they can have it. I lose it, but at least it’s out there being seen and researched on.

Travis Holland (34:34)
Yeah. How do you think that coprolites contribute to our understanding of prehistoric life? What do we learn from them?

George Frandsen (34:40)
Coprolites, I think they’re my favorite fossil. I’m surprised they’re just not to me. I’m surprised they’re not everyone’s favorite fossil. They’re like these little cool time capsules that tell us about animal physiology, the past environments, behaviors, whatnot.

And it’s like animal interactions. So what’s neat is, for example, just this week, there was a discovery down in Argentina. had this coprolite that had little bits of butterfly scales through it. It pushed back the time of butterflies, like 100 million years, because it was found in a coprolite. It held that. That coprolite was its little safekeeping for all this time.

So that’s a great example that’s just this week. And there’s been a lot of other ones too. And so they tell us this great story. You can find pollen, you can find teeth, you can find what it ate, all this stuff. And it helps piece together this past world that we’re all very curious about, all in this little nugget. And that I think is cool.

Bones are cool too, teeth are neat, but they don’t have all of that together. And everybody can kind of be familiar, they’re familiar with poop. Everybody does it. So it’s something they can understand. It’s a little harder for them to understand a bone that’s as tall as they are, but they can connect with a nugget that tells a story.

Travis Holland (35:49)
Yeah.

Well, I think it helps, yeah, as you say, tell that, so like it helps explain relationships between animals and their environment as well, more than, you know, the bones can in many ways. we’ve mentioned some of the ways that you’ve purchased or come across some specimens.

What do you do with each of them to try and authenticate and figure out where they’ve come from? is there any kind of traps for wary travelers or for new people engaging with the fossil trade or that kind of thing?

George Frandsen (36:33)
it’s a slippery slope out there. One, first thing I would say, whatever you do on your quest to find fossils, whether they’re coprolites or not, make sure that you’re obeying the law of the land, wherever you are. That’s super important. Take a lot of notes, do your research. So if you do find something that’s important, if it’s on federal, here, if it’s on federal land, just take a lot of pictures, notate it, tell the authorities, tell the rangers.

That said, there are a lot of places where you can go and it’s very legal to search for fossils and coprolites. Like in Florida and the Carolinas, you can get a permit and look in the rivers.

There are states where you can find fossils that are invertebrates. There’s also private quarries and private land where you can, if you have permission or you pay the fee, you can look for fossils. So that’s pretty neat. Work with a mentor that knows about it and they can share that information or help you get there. It’s…

As far as coprolites go, I’m pretty sure if you get on eBay or somewhere else in a public setting, if you put in coprolites, my estimate is 90 % of what is there are not true coprolites. They are chunks of agate or just plain old rocks that may kind of have a poo look, but they’re not. just, a rock called a coprolite is, it sells for more than just a rock. Okay.

And it might be that the person selling, they’re not being dishonest. They just don’t know better. Someone told them, or they see other people selling the same thing. So you got to really do your research, be honest, follow the law wherever it goes and you know, get out there and look for them. There’s nothing more fun than finding your own coprolites That is my favorite way to procure and source coprolites is finding them myself.

but I also like having the best collection in the world. I’ve, over these years, I’ve had a really strong network of people who do the same. And when they come across really significant specimens, they’ll let me know and they’ll give me an opportunity. And I try to be as fair as possible with them. So if they find anything else in the future, they think of the Poussiam or me as a home. Just recently, I had a gentleman from Texas.

send me, I it was about 40 pieces that he had found in the North Sulphur River to help create a display. And I’m working on that now because he liked what was going on at the Poozeum and that his pieces would be seen and not put in a box in a basement somewhere.

Travis Holland (38:56)
I think that, you know, that, that question of the online fossil trade or whatever it happens to be, and the kind of mislabeling, often does come down to expertise, right? Because the way that fossils are created is, is through the mineralization

tissue, whatever that happens to be, whatever that tissue is, but it is basically still turning it into rock. And so you need someone who has the expertise to know the difference quite

George Frandsen (39:19)
Yes, absolutely. And there are other there are good people out there who want to help people getting started and people who been in the industry a long time. They want to help you. I mean, I get emails all the time from folks asking if what they have is a coprolite And unfortunately, most of the time it’s it’s not. there’s times I’m totally stumped. There are times that I reach out to folks that are much smarter than me and know it much better than me and ask their opinion.

because that’s how you learn. so surround yourself with smarter people and let them help you.

Travis Holland (39:51)
the Poozeum is one thing and the coprolite is obviously the star of that show, but do you have any Bromatolites, which are vomit or Urolites perhaps, which are fossilized urine? Both of these exist, right? So are they part of your collection anywhere?

George Frandsen (39:59)
you

Yes, I would love both. I think I might have some vomit on a vertebra. It’s either a poo or a vomit on this vertebra. It’s from the Jurassic Coast of England. It’s really up in the air. either was very wet feces or it was vomit onto a piece before it fossilized.

Travis Holland (40:14)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (40:27)
But I’d love a Urolite I’d love it to find one that’s has that impression in the ground, a pee impression because they’re out there and they’re pretty neat. I would love that. think it would do very, people love seeing it. I have just never come across one in my years of doing this.

Travis Holland (40:33)
Mm-hmm.

What’s the, there was a, for a little while there was like a brain teaser circulating online about the force of volume from a sauropod vomit from that height. Firstly to push it up the neck and then the height that it falls from. So yeah, they’re going to leave impressions or leaf traces somewhere.

George Frandsen (41:00)
That’s perfect. I mean, it’s got, it happens. Everybody, everything pees, everything poos. Makes sense.

Travis Holland (41:05)
Yeah.

What’s next for the Poozeum? Are there plans for expansion or traveling exhibitions? I appreciate you’re only in your kind of first year of physical operation there, but what’s next? What are the big plans?

George Frandsen (41:20)
So like I said, it’s gone much better than I ever expected. And there are times, especially on the weekends, that I don’t have space for everybody. It’s really congested in the space that I have. That said, it’s a beautiful building. It’s a beautiful setup. I would love to have kind of a larger situation. I think I do things differently and I love kind of like a little park, a little dinosaur garden where

People can see the coprolites and there’s dinosaurs, but they’re not the regular dinosaurs. know, I know the paleontologist and the science folks, they love just to get as accurate as possible of these dinosaur models and they’ll, they’ll yell at you and they’ll complain if you don’t have one little thing, right. I don’t care. I, I, I want them to look goofy as hell. I want them, I want them to kind of have some personality. Like you look at them and know they’re, that, that.

Travis Holland (42:03)
Yeah.

George Frandsen (42:09)
dinosaurs like this or that dinosaurs like that in kind of the process to tell the story of coprolites and prehistoric past. Because I think you can tell the story with education and still have, like I said, still have a great time. So maybe do something like that or partner. There’s a lot of really big organizations that do incredible work.

It’s a far fetch that they’d probably reach out to partner to do something even bigger or to be part of their system. But all that to say, I’m really open to options. Whatever gets the word out, whatever gets these pieces out and this education out to the largest population, I think is the direction I’d want to go.

Travis Holland (42:50)
That sounds really great. And George, I appreciate you coming on. I wish you all the best with the Poozeum going forward. It’s been a real delight to have a chat. Thanks so much.

George Frandsen (43:00)
Thank you so much for having me, Travis. This has been a pure

Travis Holland (43:04)
And coming out of our interview with George Frandsen I have something completely different. And that is, I’m going to read some poetry, which is not something we’ve done on Fossils and Fiction before. But I thought I came across this poem during a conference, the Conference on Communication and the Environment down in Hobart several weeks ago. And it was such a beautiful poem that relates to a lot of what we talk about.

on this podcast and what we talk about in paleontology and conservation and those kinds of things as well. So the poem is called Species by Tishani Doshi from the book A God at the Door. And I want to thank both the author and the publisher, Cooper Canyon Press for permission to use it here on Fossils and Fiction.

Travis Holland (43:52)
Species by Tishani Doshi.

When it is time, we will herd into the bunker of the earth to join the lost animals. Pig-footed bandicoot, giant sea snail, woolly mammoth. No sound of chainsaws, only the soft swish swish of dead forests, pressing our heads to the lake’s floor, a blanket of leaves to make fossils of our femurs and last suppers.

In a million years, they will find and restore us to the jungles of kapok Their children will rally to stare at ancestors. Neanderthals in caves with paintings of the gnu period. Papa Homo erectus forever squatting over the thrill of fire. Their bastard offspring with prairie sized mandibles.

stuttering over the beginnings of speech, and finally us, diminutive species of homo, not so wise with our weak necks and robo-lovers, our cobalt-speckled lungs. Will it be for them as it was for us, impossible to imagine oceans where there are now mountains?

Will they recognize their own story in the feather-tailed dinosaur stepping out of a wave of extinction to tread over blooms of algae never once thinking about asteroids or microbial stew? If we could communicate, would we admit that intergalactic colonization was never a sound plan? We should have learned from the grass, humble in its abundance, offering food and shelter wherever it spread.

Instead, we stamped our feet like gods, marveling at the life we made, imagining it all to be ours.

Alyssa Fjeld (45:59)
So I love paleontology-themed poetry. think there’s a lot of room for creativity in what we do, right? And paleo art can refer to this whole spectrum, including poetry. And this poem in particular is a really beautiful exploration, in my opinion, of the ways that human evolution and evolution in general has kind of driven life on our planet.

Travis Holland (46:23)
I think it draws such beautiful imagery about the links between those that have gone before us and us, and then also to the future. And that’s something we often don’t think about, Paleontology as an historical science, as it was introduced to me by lecturer at one point.

is something that looks backward, but actually it’s also in progress right now. What we find, what we understand about the world around us, and then what we leave is future of paleontology. So Tishani has really links that together here in this poem. And also, you know, I think again,

Sometimes we forget about the living world in looking at the rocks and looking at what’s gone before. We forget about the world that’s here around us now, but this reminds us of that world.

Alyssa Fjeld (47:16)
Yeah. And it’s, it’s a very interesting poem to experience as well, as you kind of ricochet around from time period to time period, kind of, I think it, it, creates this feeling of, um, discordance that the poem I think is kind of talking about as well. Um, man is observing nature, but he is also part of nature. And it’s this impossible thing that you have to reconcile within yourself, this evolutionary history that we have, but also.

our point of vantage in the present. I think it’s a very beautiful poem. And I think if you’re interested in reading more poems like this, you should absolutely check out the rest of that collection.

Travis Holland (47:53)
Yeah, Tishani Doshi actually has ⁓ quite a lot of poems in this theme and dealing with this area as well as a whole range of other areas. She’s a poet I’d not come across before, but I’m definitely going to spend much more time with her work, having come across species and then also, yeah, getting into the rest of the collection. So I hope you enjoyed that little diversion following our chat. It’s been quite an eclectic episode today, but…

Lots of fun as always and ⁓ we hope to see you next time. Thanks Alyssa

Alyssa Fjeld (48:25)
Thanks Travis, see you guys in the next one.George Frandsen (00:00)
Hey buddy, what is this? And he says, it’s a coprolite and it’s a fossilized poop. I’m like, you get out of here. That is magnificent.

Alyssa Fjeld (00:33)
Welcome back to Fossils in Fiction. We’ve got a great interview coming up for you today with an unexpected museum. First, we’re going to talk a little bit about some listener feedback from the most recent couple of paleo media exploits that have been happening. Travis, how are you today?

Travis Holland (00:46)
Hmm.

Yeah. Going well. I got out to see Rebirth just recently and I have thoughts. I got, I got a lot of thoughts, which, which I won’t necessarily go into in detail, but, I have written a review on our website under the blog category. So you can check that out at fossilsfiction.co and just click blog and it’s there.

Alyssa Fjeld (00:54)
Go on?

Travis Holland (01:10)
But we also went out on the socials and asked people for their opinion, as you mentioned, and both on Jurassic World: Rebirth and also on Walking With Dinosaurs. So we had two big pieces of paleo media released recently and yeah, it’s time to talk about it. So I would say that Rebirth is definitely mixed. I’ve seen a lot of people saying that this is, you know, the best Jurassic.

Jurassic Park/Jurassic World movie since the original. And then a lot of other people saying, no, it was not good. consistently, many people seem to think it was better than the last entry Dominion. Personally, I’m not even sure about that. Like there are some really great sequences here in this film and what, okay, let me start with the positives from my perspective. What I really liked about Jurassic.

World: Rebirth was there are some great sequences that seem to have come directly from The Lost World novel, which is a really interesting, well-written book. And there is so much in it that hasn’t been used in the whole franchise so far, like across all of these different, the one, our seven movies or six previously. So there, there have been seven movies, ⁓ a full animated cartoon series with five.

⁓ five seasons and they hadn’t yet mined The Lost World for all it was worth. I think they did a good job of the things that were born from The Lost World, but I saw a really good analogy saying that the thing about Rebirth is it’s quite disconnected. it very much feels like a video game in some ways. It’s like face this dinosaur in this environment and move on to the next level and

There’s not like an overarching story. And for me, that’s, that was, that was one of the major problems. I also, I don’t think this is a spoiler because it’s been in all the marketing and whatever else, but the mutant dinosaur, the Distortus Rex is just like, I didn’t mind the Indominus Rex in Jurassic world. I kind of thought it still is passable as a kind of.

hybrid dinosaur, right? It still feels like a dinosaur, even if it’s not a real, in air quotes, a real dinosaur. And same in some ways for the, Indoraptor in Fallen Kingdom. But the Distortus Rex just does not feel in any way like a dinosaur. And so I don’t think it has a role in a Jurassic world or Jurassic Park movie. I just can’t see it. ⁓ for me, it just completely throws the whole thing.

You never see it in a natural environment for a start. You only see it in the lab, the, in the surrounds of the lab. And then briefly, it kind of goes into, into a creek, but beyond that it’s, it’s not kind of in a natural environment. which is something that, you know, I think some of the best scenes of Jurassic in the Jurassic Park franchise have come from the interaction between the humans.

being in kind of what you feel like is a dinosaur’s environment, which is a forest or whatever it happens to be. In the Lost World, you get T. rexes chasing people through creeks, in the Lost World movie that is, and even the Indominus Rex, one of the coolest scenes is when the ACU goes out to chase down the Indominus in Jurassic World. And the Indominus uses its environment very well, but you just, you don’t get that with the Distortus It just feels out of place.

That’s my take. That’s my take. And so while there were some really cool scenes, I quite liked the dinosaur designs and I liked the fact that they mined the Lost World novel quite extensively. And it was pretty well cast. I have to say it was pretty well cast. We can talk about Jonathan Bailey in a minute, but yeah, it struggled. It struggled on a whole range of levels for me. That’s where it is.

Alyssa Fjeld (04:48)
I still need to see ⁓ it. I guess need is a strong word, but like my take is, right? Like with any franchise that’s been going for ages, like Final Destination or the Freddy franchise, the Jason franchise, eventually, like there’s like a dip of quality and then eventually there’s one that’s just so silly it goes back up and that one’s quite good. And I’m still waiting for that to happen with Jurassic Park, because it’s happened for all these other franchises, right? Like the Final Destination was like, okay, all right.

Travis Holland (05:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (05:15)
Yeah, I think you’ve circled back. It’s doing something. So maybe this is it.

Travis Holland (05:18)
Yeah. Yeah. And

there were moments of that in like they were, there were actually genuinely were moments like that for me in Rebirth There was some really cool moments, but it just, a lot of it was just unexplained and I don’t think it fits the lore that they’ve established, which is really annoying to me. I’m one of those nerds who’s like, this is a retcon. It doesn’t feel right. But anyway, so, so I asked for some, for some listener feedback on Rebirth as well.

Alyssa Fjeld (05:37)
Hmm.

Travis Holland (05:46)
we got, it was good, but could have been better. that was on, that was on Instagram. and then over on TikTok, we got Rebirth was amazing. Walking with dinosaurs was not, and we’ll get to Walking With Dinosaurs. and then also the comment, Rebirth was disappointing. Walking with dinosaurs was even worse. So people were not happy. Did I say on Twitter? I meant TikTok. ⁓ that’s where those comments came from over on our, over on our TikTok.

So yeah, Walking With Dinosaurs.

Alyssa Fjeld (06:09)
Yeah!

Well, I think, okay, this is another case of like this franchise was near and dear to me as like a young person. Like this, think is the general vibe for a lot of fans of Walking with Dinosaurs, the original series, which was this like BBC production that was done, I can’t remember, was this the 90s or the 2000s when this kind of came out? The original. And it was like,

Travis Holland (06:31)
Yeah, around then, yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (06:34)
Okay, they obviously do not have like a massive, massive budget. They’re doing a lot of like stock shoots. They’re using a lot of delicious practical puppet effects, which I thought were very good. I love a puppet. But it was one of the first documentaries to show dinosaurs as like living animals in a documentary style. So Prehistoric Planet ran because Walking With Dinosaurs walked. You know what I mean? So people were really excited to see it returning with higher budgets, with more modern dinosaur science.

Travis Holland (06:55)
Right. Yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (07:02)
And then I think the general consensus for a lot of us that have sat down and seen it is, huh, where are all of the scientists that you asked and consulted? Because you’re showing a lot of them on screen, but it’s not feeling like we’re getting a lot of the dinosaurs doing the things that they’re talking about. It’s not taking the same kinds of stances that we now know a dinosaur documentary like Prehistoric Planet can do.

Travis Holland (07:25)
Hmm. So again, a little bit like disconnected. Yeah. I think you’re right actually. Cause what I liked about Walking With Dinosaurs is those interviews with scientists in the field with paleo, whatever they happened to be, but it doesn’t feel like that necessarily informed what was happening in the stories that were, you know, set around the dinosaurs. And perhaps part of it was that there were these kind of, ⁓

Alyssa Fjeld (07:36)
Yeah.

Travis Holland (07:49)
almost novels or novellas around the characters, right? Whereas Prehistoric Planet was more your vignettes of life as opposed to their kind of whole life cycle over several months. I don’t know. The listener feedback was that on Instagram.

We had a comment, me and my son love it. The CGI was a little bit of a letdown, but loved the modern day elements. So, you know, again, that aspect worked really well. James Pascoe, one of our former guests said, my children loved it. He got to see how they got to see how the fossils are dug up. And then they asked so many questions. So again, that aspect is really coming to the fore. And I think this shows people are hungry for the science, right? They want to know what happens out there.

Alyssa Fjeld (08:28)
Yeah, like I think there is space for a documentary like this at the table, especially for people who want a touchstone for what a paleontologist is to not just be Ross from Friends. Begging you all once again to please, please pick someone else. It’s okay to use Ross, but there are so many others.

Travis Holland (08:44)
⁓ you know, and some other people said it was a sequel in name only, which I kind of don’t necessarily agree with. I think it was thematically on brand with, with the original, but, but they still enjoyed it and Torvosaurus rep made me happy. was the other comment we got on Instagram. yeah, wanting to see the Torvosaurus in there was great as well. So, I know your lab was excited for.

for Walking With Dinosaurs? What’s the general vibe there amongst the Monash researchers?

Alyssa Fjeld (09:10)
I think it was watched, but we didn’t end up having a watch party this time. I think the vibe became much more subdued after a couple of people with access to the early release had a look at it. yeah, it just didn’t feel like… I think people were hoping for something a little bit more tied into the nostalgia and the style of the original one. And then also just, I think they had been hoping for something a little bit more like Prehistoric Planet.

Travis Holland (09:29)
Yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (09:34)
And then I guess hearing from some of the people online, you know, there have been a couple of posts from people who’ve worked on this series saying, hey, we just didn’t feel like they really listened to us as consults. I think that sort of thing puts a damper on it because as a researcher, as somebody who is a paleontologist and a lot of people in our lab have been consults for large projects, it’s like, well, they do want the people that work with these larger organizations to have their voices heard and they want to support that.

kind of thing. But I wouldn’t say that anybody’s like directly said anything mean or nasty about it. The vibe has just been, yep, that was good. I mean, sure.

Travis Holland (10:11)
Yeah, I think, you know, there was, it’s also a problem potentially when there’s so much hype around these things and then it does feel okay. It’s interesting. It’s good, but it didn’t quite live up to the standards of, you know, Prehistoric Planet, for example, but

And, know, maybe if it wasn’t for Prehistoric Planet, it would have done, it would have done much better. Maybe the, the, you know, the hype was, was unfounded or unplaced or the hopes were kind of too high, but it was good. You know, Walking with Dinosaurs is good. I can, I think we can safely recommend it and look, can, I can still recommend Rebirth as well. think people should go and see that if you like watching dinosaurs, then go and see Rebirth. yeah.

Alyssa Fjeld (10:51)
Like I think a lot of these, like think Walking with Dinosaurs, the original became such a staple of classrooms and educational outposts. And I think, you know, if you’re interested in educating young people about dinosaurs, then this is something to pay attention to, regardless of what opinion you end up having of it in the end. Check out what the popular franchises are doing with dinosaurs and check out what the documentary side of things is doing. Why not?

Travis Holland (11:11)
Yeah,

absolutely. And talking about making dinosaurs accessible and making science interesting and fun. and also in fact, a little bit of a tie back to Walking With Dinosaurs again, which you’ll see why once we get into the interview, the interview this week is a lot of fun. It’s also the reason for the title of the episode, which

⁓ isn’t being drawn from, from our feelings on Walking With Dinosaurs or Jurassic World: Rebirth, but is still a reference to one of Jeff Goldblum’s most famous lines from Jurassic Park. Of course that is one big pile of shit. And the interview is with George Frandsen from the Poozeum of all places.

Alyssa Fjeld (11:55)
If you’re wondering to yourself at home, is that what it sounds like? The answer is, yup, it sure is. It comes out of every living animal that we know of ⁓ in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And there’s at least one place on the world there you can go to visit and check out a wide variety of prehistoric and modern poos is my understanding. They’ve got coprolites as well as information about how things go to the bathroom today.

Travis Holland (12:19)
Yeah.

All sorts of things. George was such a good sport and I cannot wait to get to the Poozeum in one day in Arizona. So here’s the interview.

Travis Holland (12:31)
George, what sparked your initial fascination with coprolites and how did you take that from being a collector to a museum founder?

George Frandsen (12:40)
Well, that’s an interesting question. It’s ⁓ story as old as time. It’s ⁓ you know, love at first sight. almost 30 years ago, way before the internet became a thing. All I had were books on fossils and dinosaurs. And I found myself in the first year of college out at a rock and fossil shop in a town called Moab, Utah, in Eastern Utah. And I saw this piece in a case and it looked

I don’t know, was about yay big and it looked like kind of like a cat turd. And I said, you know, Hey buddy, what is this? And he says, it’s a coprolite and it’s a fossilized poop. I think he said something else, but it’s basically a fossilized poop. I’m like, you get out of here. That is magnificent. is, well, one that can’t be, I’ve never, in Utah, there are fossils everywhere.

been to museums and I’ve seen the books and there’s never been a coprolite. What is this thing? But this is so funny. It’s so gross. And it seems kind of fascinating. So I bought it and I took it to a professor at college who was teaching my first paleontology class, prehistoric life. And he was, he was a very smart paleontologist, very smart man.

He kind of took me under his wing, told me all about them, that they exist, that I could actually go and find them. And it just blew my mind. I’m like, this is the best thing ever. now I must find more. And so that’s what set it off over the course of like the next 17 to 20 years. I just kept collecting. I would go out and look for them and one piece was more incredible than the last piece or it was different shape.

or it had kind of a different story. thought, man, this is really neat. And then when the internet started taking hold and you could connect with people from all over the world who had the same hobbies and passions as you do, you could find people say like Lyme Regis England who look for fossils every day and they find coprolites and they have these great bits of pieces of food and stuff in them called inclusions.

So I was able to start growing the collection, not only from around my own area, but from all around the world, which was awesome. Then my collection had gotten pretty big and everybody made the joke that you must have the biggest collection in the world. I who else would even collect these? Nobody. So I guess it wouldn’t take much, right? And so got ahold of Guinness and I didn’t ever expect to hear back from them.

And they responded and said, yes, let’s do an official Guinness count. And so I said, yes, let’s do it. And they sent the requirements, which are lengthy, you could say. In short, has to be in a public place, be inspected by two paleontologists, videoed, every piece photographed, part of a database or a spreadsheet. And they have to go through each one. I don’t get to do it.

These other folks go through each one saying yay or nay to the pieces at the end of the time. It will be or won’t be and we’ll go on. And we got done with that day and they had gone through 1,277 pieces, which is a bunch of fossilized poo. But that was the whole day. These two guys, they did such an incredible job. They volunteered for it. They showed up.

They worked all day counting turds and, you know, really owe them a debt of gratitude. Okay. So that got me kind of some notoriety. became in the, it got in the book, actually it was in the 2017 Guinness world record book. And at the same time I had started a Poozeum website all about coprolites and fossilized poo because there was nowhere else that you could go to a website and that’s all you learn about. And.

So you have these two kind of converging things and then.

Museum started, this is what I didn’t expect, museum started reaching out saying, we saw you in Guinness or we heard about your collection. Can we borrow some pieces? I’m like, what an honor. Well, absolutely you can borrow some pieces. So started sending parts and pieces of the collection all over the United States for them to showcase. And also people wanted pictures, they wanted stories.

Travis Holland (16:25)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (16:39)
And it just got out there and I loved it because I had a totally different job. It’s not awesome. It was a good job and I’m grateful for it, but it wasn’t anything to do with this. And one day I just said, you know what? This is, people seem to really enjoy this collection when it travels somewhere. It’s, it’s a lot of fun. Maybe someday it could be a real permanent Poozeum instead of the collection moving around,

Travis Holland (16:48)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (17:03)
It’s in a permanent place and I can do it exactly the way I want it because a lot of the museums, well, they have their own way of displaying things and providing information. I just was happy they were doing it. And that’s what kicked off the goal to open a Poozeum saved and saved, got there and found the perfect place last year opened in May and first year, first season.

say I had 50,000 people through the Poozeum and it’s not that big a space. so long story, but here I am running the Poozeum in Williams, Arizona and it’s incredible.

Travis Holland (17:35)
That’s, that’s really cool. And 50,000 for a startup museum in a kind of smaller, smaller city. You know, that to me seems like an amazing number. that what you were expecting through the door or what did you kind of think or hope?

George Frandsen (17:52)
So I had two ideas of what would happen. Let me tell you, I know a lot of people and they all know I collect. When I started telling them that I was going to do this, the great majority said that was a dumb idea, that was stupid, don’t quit your job, don’t sell your house, don’t move across the country. Are you insane? You can do that someday. Do that someday. Don’t be foolish.

There’s probably less than five people who said, that’s an incredible idea. I support you and I do whatever I can to help. So I thought, well, we there’s this yin and yang. Maybe it’s going to be successful and I can do this every day. My passion every day, or it will fold it a month and I’ll know it pretty quick. People just won’t get it. They’ll think it’s stupid and it will die immediately.

And in that case, I’m still around. I can go back to loaning the pieces to museums and go back and work in another job. So it ended up being much more successful than I ever imagined. Media attention from all over the world is still getting it. I I get to be here speaking with you over a year on from when it opened. It’s been an incredible journey and one that I could never…

have hoped for.

Travis Holland (19:02)
So you mentioned you move across the country. Did you have a previous connection to Williams?

George Frandsen (19:07)
No. So I’m from Utah. It’s the state north of Arizona. And I knew I wanted to come back west in the mountains and deserts with rocks and features.

Travis Holland (19:10)
Mm-hmm.

feels like a good place for a fossil museum.

George Frandsen (19:19)
Yeah. And so we came over and we thought we want to be on Route 66, which is a very like quirky highway through the United States that is true Americana kind of stuff. And so we went through New Mexico, we went through Arizona and we got to Williams and we’ve never been through there. We’ve never been there before. And it was like a Hallmark movie. It was just…

It was at Christmas time and you know, Santa Claus is walking around, there’s tree, there’s lights, people give an outsider. There’s a train to the Polar Express. When every other town was kind of quiet, this was bustling full of families and kids and people enjoying this, you know, the winter weather. Most of Arizona is pretty hot. They don’t get winter weather. And we said, you know what? This is kind of quirky. It’s right on Route 66, right next to the Grand Canyon.

Travis Holland (20:04)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (20:04)
It brings in all the things that I was kind of looking for into one spot. And what I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find real estate. And so we just were patient. And then when the building that I’m in opened up, it’s this old saloon. It’s a very old Western cowboy town opened up had just been remodeled and the owner was got the concept and he was excited. It was born and.

Within two months quit, sold the house, packed up a truck and moved across country to come to Williams.

Travis Holland (20:35)
It sounds like you’ve been embraced by the town as you’ve embraced it yourself. Is that right?

George Frandsen (20:39)
The town has been incredible. Like I was very worried because you have this big sign that says Poo-seum. Some might find that offensive. And then my logo has this T-Rex, this cartoonish animated T-Rex on the toilet. And number one for fossilized number two. It is fast. It’s amazing. It’s great. It’s colorful. It’s, you know, the colors are so ugly on it. It’s…

Travis Holland (20:47)
Mm-hmm.

It’s a great logo. Yeah.

George Frandsen (21:02)
the worst yellows and worst greens and everything stuck together. Any art person would puke if they saw it. And I said, Hey, look Williams, I’m going to put this on your main drag through town. And they’re like, but sounds good. And it was great. They were supportive. And now when you drive through one of the first things when you get to the historic district of town is you see the big Poozeum sign and

The town’s been great. The visitor center sends people my way. lot of referrals. As I do with them, there’s a lot of other things to do in town, but everybody’s been incredible. I had a bunch of women from the church bring me pens that they had made with flowers on it as like a welcome gift into town. It took me. was just so kind and so nice that they would be like that.

Travis Holland (21:47)
That’s, that’s really great. Now you mentioned those, those Guinness world records. believe you hold one for the largest carnivorous coprolite. So the single largest coprolite and then another for the largest collection. So from one Guinness world record holder to another, well done on that. So is that right? and your, your largest carnivorous coprolite, is Barnum.

George Frandsen (21:59)
Yes.

Thank you.

That’s right, it’s named Barnum after P.T. Barnum, the circus man or the showman and Barnum Brown.

Travis Holland (22:10)
Yeah.

I think he’d like that. feel like

that’s something that, that PT Barnum would, would embrace. Yeah.

George Frandsen (22:19)
I think he’d love it. I think he would

take it with him and show it all around the world. And I think that would be incredible.

Travis Holland (22:25)
Tell us about that coprolite.

George Frandsen (22:27)
Oh, so Barnum is believed to be from a T-Rex dinosaur. It’s from the Hill Creek formation, uh, from South Dakota near a town called Buffalo, which is North of the Black Hills. It is 26 and a half inches long. So pretty big or 67.5 centimeters. And then it’s, uh, about 15, 16 centimeters wide or just over six inches wide and weighs over 20 pounds.

Travis Holland (22:31)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (22:52)
and that’s about 9.3 kilograms. And if you’re a fan of South Park, that’s 8.18 Courics If you know that episode, you know what I’m talking about.

Travis Holland (23:04)
I need to, I need to brush up. used to watch South Park years ago, but it’s fallen out of my rotation.

George Frandsen (23:10)
They have, I’ll just say they have a measuring contest and the unit of measure is Courics So, but it’s, an incredible piece. So it’s got chunks of bone, like chopped up bones throughout it that you can see on the surface. The side that’s in the jacket actually has more bones because that was the side eroding from the ground. And now it’s inside the jacket and it’s safe. The side that you see.

Travis Holland (23:13)
Right.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (23:36)
Still, you can see the bones and whatnot. so it shows that fast digestion. It showed that he was eating other animals, or it was, and its size and shape, it has a lot of circular layered chunks to it. And it has like this bend. And if you look at a lot of fossilized food, long ones, long skinny ones, they have this very neat kind of elbow to them.

And that’s either believed from turning it out, know, pushing it out or when it hits the mud or ground, it kind of bends over on itself due to its weight.

Travis Holland (24:08)
Now, was it Barnum that appeared recently in Walking with Dinosaurs?

George Frandsen (24:12)
Yes, yes, that is Barnum. Barnum is getting a little bit of fame. So they reached out and said, hey, this is our story we’re trying to tell. lot of these really great coprolites that are attributed to carnivorous dinosaurs are locked up in museums and we’re not able to have them brought to the field. Are you willing to bring Barnum to the field?

And I really wasn’t, that means putting it in a box, putting it on a plane. If you’ve ever watched people throw luggage on a plane, I was pretty nervous. And so I did some other extra things to make it safe and went up to Montana, took Barnum and the paleontologists were able to see it and video.

with it for that first episode, which is really great.

This lighting was good. It looked good. ⁓ Perfect.

Travis Holland (24:58)
Yeah, you know, was a perfect, perfect movie star.

I don’t know why, you know, Hollywood’s not putting more poos on screen like

George Frandsen (25:07)
Maybe it’s setting the foundation for future turds.

Travis Holland (25:11)
Exactly right. The foundation is important. know, it’s, you’ve got to have the, yeah, well, I was going to say you got to have the fiber, the fiber foundation in place.

George Frandsen (25:14)
It is. What they call it? Trailblazer.

Yes sir,

yes you do.

Travis Holland (25:23)
Now, I mean, this gets us to, you know, an interesting question. It is easy to make jokes about, about fossilized poo and feces and these kinds of things. So how do you, do you balance that scientific education approach with the kind of entertainment and the jokes? How do you do that?

George Frandsen (25:40)
Sure. So I’m the kind of learner, I’m a very visual learner and big blocks of text are really, they’re hard for me. I turn off instantly. It’s just no fun and I’ll walk away. So that was part of making this Poozium is that it had to be both. It had to be part natural history museum with the classic

Travis Holland (25:44)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (26:04)
labels that tell all about the piece, where it came from, size, importance of it. But it had to have something else that brought it together. So if you are not a reader like me, if you’re not one who’s going to go read every label in the museum, I had these carnival banners made, these antique vintage looking carnival banners from

This woman who specializes in that, she did an incredible job telling the story of these different varieties of coprolites in this very bright carnival way. And when people walk in, they see this. So one might say, dino bite. And it has this big jaw coming down on a turd, right?

Travis Holland (26:41)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (26:42)
You see that and you want to know what it’s about. Those those banners lead you into wanting to know more. So then they’ll go over there and they’ll research what’s going on more in that case, where I think a lot of the natural history museums maybe don’t provide that kind of that grab for their audience. ⁓ Turds with teeth. I’ve got one that says Betty Crocker’s emphasis on the croc and it’s a

Travis Holland (27:00)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (27:07)
big half a crocodile where the feces has been pushed up through the scutes and you can see bits of fish that it ate and you can identify what kind of fish it was. Of course, there’s Barnum in a banner and he’s being carried around by a big T-Rex and everybody says, why is it being carried around? I don’t know. I don’t know why it’s being carried around. It’s he’s proud of it, I guess. So, yeah, I think to learn.

Travis Holland (27:18)
All right.

George Frandsen (27:32)
And to get people excited about something, they’ve got to have fun. They have to be entertained. If you don’t do that, you will die. That concept will die. The business will die because no one will care. But if they come in and have fun and they can get this new concept that most of them have never heard about before, you’re going to do all right. they’re going to leave knowing something more than they did when they walked in.

Travis Holland (27:57)
what kind of reactions are you getting from the guests? Is there a lot of that pointing and giggling or, you know, are people genuinely coming to learn stuff?

George Frandsen (28:04)
So I get everything. I get students from the university up the way and around everywhere. And I get kids, I get families. Due to the proximity of the Grand Canyon, I get people from all over the world and they stop through Williams. So I have people from all different countries. lot of the information is translated into Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. Those are the highest.

Travis Holland (28:05)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (28:26)
percentage of languages that come through my door. So they can understand it through an app or a website. so kids, kids are incredible because I don’t know if they disappoint their parents or their parents are excited by it because they’ll have taken this home on the trip to the Grand Canyon. The whole family will either drive cross country or for a long time to see this beautiful site, this national park.

And all the kids can talk about is the Poozeum. They want to see fossilized poo and dinosaur poo. So they’ll come in and the kids will just be zipping around. they’re so excited and they’re greeted by a bronze statue of T-rex on a toilet. And they don’t, they can’t figure out why this bronze is like that. This statue, they’ve never seen a statue kind of like that. A giant poo, this big three and a half feet wide.

a skeleton of a small Tyrannosaur with a poo zipping out, out into the, you know, abyss. And it’s just something their brain has never seen. They’ve never comprehended this and they’re just so excited. And parents will say, you know, we went to, we’re going to the Grand Canyon, but all the kid could talk about was the Poozeum or the, they leave the Poozeum was their favorite thing. get a lot of emails.

and messages from folks that out of all the things they saw, the kids loved the Poozeum. And it’s so awesome for me. It’s a really great feeling that those young people care about it. Parents on the other hand, they can be a little more hesitant in opening up to the concepts. But once they do, I thought this was going to be a joke. I thought this was not going to be serious, but

This is actually very serious. You have a lot of great information here, but it’s fun and they get on board too. So honestly, I haven’t had very many people who come in and just say, this is terrible. And I think part of that is, you know what you’re walking into from the front of the museum. It gives you a good hint. So if you’re not into that kind of stuff, I think you stay away.

Travis Holland (30:16)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (30:22)
But so far I’ve been very lucky, I’ve been very fortunate that people of all demographics have enjoyed it. And that’s the other thing. The Poozeum is absolutely free. It’s not free on a day or certain times to certain people. It is free every day to every single person who wants to come through that door. And I think that’s important because there’s a lot of people out there that don’t have the money or wouldn’t

invest the money in something they didn’t understand or know about.

to go see, but since it’s free, they’ll give it a chance and they’ll come in and they’ll get that experience where they may never have gone to another museum because of the cost.

Travis Holland (30:58)
That’s a really interesting point actually. And I hadn’t expected that to be honest, because I guess you don’t usually see for private museums that free. You know, very often the public ones will be, or at least to locals. But yeah, you don’t very often see that for private museums. So that’s a really great philosophy.

George Frandsen (31:14)
Yeah, it was important to me because since the beginning, when I was loaning this collection out, everybody says, well, how much are you charging? Nothing. It’s incredible that these people want to display my hard work of putting this collection together and this information. All they have to pay is for shipping. They have to pay for insurance and give it a good home in a glass case. So I never made any money. I spent more money than

It’s comical amount of money on this endeavor. And I don’t know, just, it was important back then. And that’s why I wanted to carry through with my mission that anybody who wanted to see it is going to see it and they could learn and they can be inspired

Travis Holland (31:52)
I’m interested to know, you mentioned a little bit that you had studied paleontology, at university.

but then maybe your career went in a different direction. What’s been your involvement with scientific paleontology?

George Frandsen (32:03)
All right. So yes, first couple of years of college, I studied paleontology, other sciences, and I loved it. I thought it was incredible. Moved on to university at the University of Utah. And I discovered that my math skills were not up to par to continue in paleontology, biology, or geology. I think that people who can pass that math, incredible folks. I couldn’t, and I knew I couldn’t.

Travis Holland (32:26)
I mean, this is why I

do podcasting, right? Yeah.

George Frandsen (32:28)
That’s good. You do what you’re good at.

And so I ended up finishing with an archaeology anthropology degree. So I like old stuff and it was a, it was a good transition to learn about my state and the area around here and the peoples that live long ago before contact. that was, that was university got out, really couldn’t transcend.

Transition that into a paying job. I needed money. I needed a paycheck couldn’t do it So I ended up going a different path. I’ve done a bunch of different jobs not gonna bore you with those but At the same time I would take whatever opportunity I could get to continue learning I’d read research papers. I’d read books Movies YouTube I have connections still with different

Universities have got the opportunity to go out on digs and learn that process from an academic perspective. I also have friends that own property and there are lot of quarries and places you can go as a private person and pay a fee and look for fossils. So I’ve done that also. There’s also been some really great paleo people that have been great mentors.

that have partnered with me on papers and from discoveries that I have made or have come through my way that so it can get out in the world so people can see it. So it doesn’t just stay in the collection where no one sees it. The problem is, like I said, it’s private and a lot of the academic institutions or public institutions, the publications that

you know, publish those research papers frown on anything that’s not in the public domain. So a lot of this stuff, I have these incredible pieces, but they’ll never publish it on it because it’s not within the public realm. So instead, I’ll do videos I will publish in fossil newsletters and or I will donate the piece to a public museum.

and a paleontologist who I know is going to write on it. And so they can have it. I lose it, but at least it’s out there being seen and researched on.

Travis Holland (34:34)
Yeah. How do you think that coprolites contribute to our understanding of prehistoric life? What do we learn from them?

George Frandsen (34:40)
Coprolites, I think they’re my favorite fossil. I’m surprised they’re just not to me. I’m surprised they’re not everyone’s favorite fossil. They’re like these little cool time capsules that tell us about animal physiology, the past environments, behaviors, whatnot.

And it’s like animal interactions. So what’s neat is, for example, just this week, there was a discovery down in Argentina. had this coprolite that had little bits of butterfly scales through it. It pushed back the time of butterflies, like 100 million years, because it was found in a coprolite. It held that. That coprolite was its little safekeeping for all this time.

So that’s a great example that’s just this week. And there’s been a lot of other ones too. And so they tell us this great story. You can find pollen, you can find teeth, you can find what it ate, all this stuff. And it helps piece together this past world that we’re all very curious about, all in this little nugget. And that I think is cool.

Bones are cool too, teeth are neat, but they don’t have all of that together. And everybody can kind of be familiar, they’re familiar with poop. Everybody does it. So it’s something they can understand. It’s a little harder for them to understand a bone that’s as tall as they are, but they can connect with a nugget that tells a story.

Travis Holland (35:49)
Yeah.

Well, I think it helps, yeah, as you say, tell that, so like it helps explain relationships between animals and their environment as well, more than, you know, the bones can in many ways. we’ve mentioned some of the ways that you’ve purchased or come across some specimens.

What do you do with each of them to try and authenticate and figure out where they’ve come from? is there any kind of traps for wary travelers or for new people engaging with the fossil trade or that kind of thing?

George Frandsen (36:33)
it’s a slippery slope out there. One, first thing I would say, whatever you do on your quest to find fossils, whether they’re coprolites or not, make sure that you’re obeying the law of the land, wherever you are. That’s super important. Take a lot of notes, do your research. So if you do find something that’s important, if it’s on federal, here, if it’s on federal land, just take a lot of pictures, notate it, tell the authorities, tell the rangers.

That said, there are a lot of places where you can go and it’s very legal to search for fossils and coprolites. Like in Florida and the Carolinas, you can get a permit and look in the rivers.

There are states where you can find fossils that are invertebrates. There’s also private quarries and private land where you can, if you have permission or you pay the fee, you can look for fossils. So that’s pretty neat. Work with a mentor that knows about it and they can share that information or help you get there. It’s…

As far as coprolites go, I’m pretty sure if you get on eBay or somewhere else in a public setting, if you put in coprolites, my estimate is 90 % of what is there are not true coprolites. They are chunks of agate or just plain old rocks that may kind of have a poo look, but they’re not. just, a rock called a coprolite is, it sells for more than just a rock. Okay.

And it might be that the person selling, they’re not being dishonest. They just don’t know better. Someone told them, or they see other people selling the same thing. So you got to really do your research, be honest, follow the law wherever it goes and you know, get out there and look for them. There’s nothing more fun than finding your own coprolites That is my favorite way to procure and source coprolites is finding them myself.

but I also like having the best collection in the world. I’ve, over these years, I’ve had a really strong network of people who do the same. And when they come across really significant specimens, they’ll let me know and they’ll give me an opportunity. And I try to be as fair as possible with them. So if they find anything else in the future, they think of the Poussiam or me as a home. Just recently, I had a gentleman from Texas.

send me, I it was about 40 pieces that he had found in the North Sulphur River to help create a display. And I’m working on that now because he liked what was going on at the Poozeum and that his pieces would be seen and not put in a box in a basement somewhere.

Travis Holland (38:56)
I think that, you know, that, that question of the online fossil trade or whatever it happens to be, and the kind of mislabeling, often does come down to expertise, right? Because the way that fossils are created is, is through the mineralization

tissue, whatever that happens to be, whatever that tissue is, but it is basically still turning it into rock. And so you need someone who has the expertise to know the difference quite

George Frandsen (39:19)
Yes, absolutely. And there are other there are good people out there who want to help people getting started and people who been in the industry a long time. They want to help you. I mean, I get emails all the time from folks asking if what they have is a coprolite And unfortunately, most of the time it’s it’s not. there’s times I’m totally stumped. There are times that I reach out to folks that are much smarter than me and know it much better than me and ask their opinion.

because that’s how you learn. so surround yourself with smarter people and let them help you.

Travis Holland (39:51)
the Poozeum is one thing and the coprolite is obviously the star of that show, but do you have any Bromatolites, which are vomit or Urolites perhaps, which are fossilized urine? Both of these exist, right? So are they part of your collection anywhere?

George Frandsen (39:59)
you

Yes, I would love both. I think I might have some vomit on a vertebra. It’s either a poo or a vomit on this vertebra. It’s from the Jurassic Coast of England. It’s really up in the air. either was very wet feces or it was vomit onto a piece before it fossilized.

Travis Holland (40:14)
Mm-hmm.

George Frandsen (40:27)
But I’d love a Urolite I’d love it to find one that’s has that impression in the ground, a pee impression because they’re out there and they’re pretty neat. I would love that. think it would do very, people love seeing it. I have just never come across one in my years of doing this.

Travis Holland (40:33)
Mm-hmm.

What’s the, there was a, for a little while there was like a brain teaser circulating online about the force of volume from a sauropod vomit from that height. Firstly to push it up the neck and then the height that it falls from. So yeah, they’re going to leave impressions or leaf traces somewhere.

George Frandsen (41:00)
That’s perfect. I mean, it’s got, it happens. Everybody, everything pees, everything poos. Makes sense.

Travis Holland (41:05)
Yeah.

What’s next for the Poozeum? Are there plans for expansion or traveling exhibitions? I appreciate you’re only in your kind of first year of physical operation there, but what’s next? What are the big plans?

George Frandsen (41:20)
So like I said, it’s gone much better than I ever expected. And there are times, especially on the weekends, that I don’t have space for everybody. It’s really congested in the space that I have. That said, it’s a beautiful building. It’s a beautiful setup. I would love to have kind of a larger situation. I think I do things differently and I love kind of like a little park, a little dinosaur garden where

People can see the coprolites and there’s dinosaurs, but they’re not the regular dinosaurs. know, I know the paleontologist and the science folks, they love just to get as accurate as possible of these dinosaur models and they’ll, they’ll yell at you and they’ll complain if you don’t have one little thing, right. I don’t care. I, I, I want them to look goofy as hell. I want them, I want them to kind of have some personality. Like you look at them and know they’re, that, that.

Travis Holland (42:03)
Yeah.

George Frandsen (42:09)
dinosaurs like this or that dinosaurs like that in kind of the process to tell the story of coprolites and prehistoric past. Because I think you can tell the story with education and still have, like I said, still have a great time. So maybe do something like that or partner. There’s a lot of really big organizations that do incredible work.

It’s a far fetch that they’d probably reach out to partner to do something even bigger or to be part of their system. But all that to say, I’m really open to options. Whatever gets the word out, whatever gets these pieces out and this education out to the largest population, I think is the direction I’d want to go.

Travis Holland (42:50)
That sounds really great. And George, I appreciate you coming on. I wish you all the best with the Poozeum going forward. It’s been a real delight to have a chat. Thanks so much.

George Frandsen (43:00)
Thank you so much for having me, Travis. This has been a pure

Travis Holland (43:04)
And coming out of our interview with George Frandsen I have something completely different. And that is, I’m going to read some poetry, which is not something we’ve done on Fossils and Fiction before. But I thought I came across this poem during a conference, the Conference on Communication and the Environment down in Hobart several weeks ago. And it was such a beautiful poem that relates to a lot of what we talk about.

on this podcast and what we talk about in paleontology and conservation and those kinds of things as well. So the poem is called Species by Tishani Doshi from the book A God at the Door. And I want to thank both the author and the publisher, Cooper Canyon Press for permission to use it here on Fossils and Fiction.

Travis Holland (43:52)
Species by Tishani Doshi.

When it is time, we will herd into the bunker of the earth to join the lost animals. Pig-footed bandicoot, giant sea snail, woolly mammoth. No sound of chainsaws, only the soft swish swish of dead forests, pressing our heads to the lake’s floor, a blanket of leaves to make fossils of our femurs and last suppers.

In a million years, they will find and restore us to the jungles of kapok Their children will rally to stare at ancestors. Neanderthals in caves with paintings of the gnu period. Papa Homo erectus forever squatting over the thrill of fire. Their bastard offspring with prairie sized mandibles.

stuttering over the beginnings of speech, and finally us, diminutive species of homo, not so wise with our weak necks and robo-lovers, our cobalt-speckled lungs. Will it be for them as it was for us, impossible to imagine oceans where there are now mountains?

Will they recognize their own story in the feather-tailed dinosaur stepping out of a wave of extinction to tread over blooms of algae never once thinking about asteroids or microbial stew? If we could communicate, would we admit that intergalactic colonization was never a sound plan? We should have learned from the grass, humble in its abundance, offering food and shelter wherever it spread.

Instead, we stamped our feet like gods, marveling at the life we made, imagining it all to be ours.

Alyssa Fjeld (45:59)
So I love paleontology-themed poetry. think there’s a lot of room for creativity in what we do, right? And paleo art can refer to this whole spectrum, including poetry. And this poem in particular is a really beautiful exploration, in my opinion, of the ways that human evolution and evolution in general has kind of driven life on our planet.

Travis Holland (46:23)
I think it draws such beautiful imagery about the links between those that have gone before us and us, and then also to the future. And that’s something we often don’t think about, Paleontology as an historical science, as it was introduced to me by lecturer at one point.

is something that looks backward, but actually it’s also in progress right now. What we find, what we understand about the world around us, and then what we leave is future of paleontology. So Tishani has really links that together here in this poem. And also, you know, I think again,

Sometimes we forget about the living world in looking at the rocks and looking at what’s gone before. We forget about the world that’s here around us now, but this reminds us of that world.

Alyssa Fjeld (47:16)
Yeah. And it’s, it’s a very interesting poem to experience as well, as you kind of ricochet around from time period to time period, kind of, I think it, it, creates this feeling of, um, discordance that the poem I think is kind of talking about as well. Um, man is observing nature, but he is also part of nature. And it’s this impossible thing that you have to reconcile within yourself, this evolutionary history that we have, but also.

our point of vantage in the present. I think it’s a very beautiful poem. And I think if you’re interested in reading more poems like this, you should absolutely check out the rest of that collection.

Travis Holland (47:53)
Yeah, Tishani Doshi actually has ⁓ quite a lot of poems in this theme and dealing with this area as well as a whole range of other areas. She’s a poet I’d not come across before, but I’m definitely going to spend much more time with her work, having come across species and then also, yeah, getting into the rest of the collection. So I hope you enjoyed that little diversion following our chat. It’s been quite an eclectic episode today, but…

Lots of fun as always and ⁓ we hope to see you next time. Thanks Alyssa

Alyssa Fjeld (48:25)
Thanks Travis, see you guys in the next one.

Related Posts

Episode 48: That is one big pile of Poozeum

July 29, 2025

Read More

Review: The Mutated Mess of Jurassic World Rebirth

July 9, 2025

Read More