DUNN - SEILER MUSEUM

The Dunn-Seiler Geology Museum is home to extensive mineral and rock collections, as well as meteorites and fossils from even the oldest ages of the Earth. Visitors can learn about mineral families and properties, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, mass extinctions and asteroids, karst, and plate tectonics. We are very fortunate to house a Triceratops skull, the skull of a Cretaceous Crocodile and the shell of a Cretaceous Sea Turtle, as well as many fossils from Mississippi and the Southeast. Well over 1,000 visitors ranging in age from 8 to 70+ visit the Dunn-Seiler every semester. The majority of our visitors are school students between grades 3 and 9, but the museum has something for everyone. Museum tours and presentations can be arranged by calling the Department of Geosciences office at (662) 325-3915.

The collections in the Dunn-Seiler museum were begun in the late 1800's. In 1946 the Board of Trustees of Institutions of Higher Learning passed a resolution which granted authority to form the Franklin Seiler Museum. Mr. Franklin Carl Seiler (1916-1945) was a geology student and later an instructor who was killed in action during WW II in Europe. In 1962 the museum was renamed the Dunn-Seiler Museum in recognition of the efforts of Dr. Paul Heaney Dunn (1895-1967), who was department head from 1934 to 1962 and whose efforts had led to the development of the museum.