11-year-old fossil collector became the world's youngest museum curator – he opened it at just 9 years old

Eleven-year-old Anderson Taylor from Cambridge, Illinois, now holds the Guinness World Record for youngest male museum curator.

He received the award plaque last month, though the record itself dates back to August 8, 2024. At the time his museum opened, he was nine years and 340 days old.

The place is called the Cambridge Museum of Natural History, and his grandmother made the sign hanging above the entrance. Some visitors flat out refuse to believe a kid runs the place. When that happens, Taylor just pulls out the plaque.

It all started with a dinosaur documentary he watched at age three:

Back when I was around 3 years old, I was watching a show on dinosaurs, and I decided that I wanted to go find some fossils. So I went outside to my driveway.

His search paid off that same day. He found a crinoid fossil right in his own yard – remains of an ancient echinoderm commonly found in Midwest limestone. That single find kicked off years of systematic collecting.

The collection grew through several channels. Some pieces came from family trips, others arrived as gifts, and a few were dug up alongside friends on the gravel lot at school. Eventually the pile got so big his mother told him to get it out of the house.

That's when the museum idea took shape. City officials let him use a municipal building rent-free for a year and a half so he could raise money to buy it outright. According to his GoFundMe page, the purchase and renovations needed roughly $50,000.

The museum now holds around a thousand exhibits, in a town of roughly two thousand people. It draws hundreds of visitors, including plenty from out of town, and local residents keep chipping in donations.

The exhibits include:

• Native American artifacts

• gemstones and minerals

• fossils

• taxidermy animals

• insects

Taylor's favorite piece is a mastodon femur, given to him by his mother's former science teacher. The bone takes up more than half of one glass display case.

Beyond running tours, Taylor gives presentations to school groups both inside the museum and out in the field. He describes his goal simply: telling the stories behind individual exhibits and introducing his neighbors to animals that roamed the earth long before people did.

Space is already running out in the building. Plans include converting the second-floor apartment for museum use, possibly moving to a bigger location, or building an addition on the empty lot behind the current spot. His personal dream is to one day display a complete dinosaur skeleton.