Akron Fossils & Science Center

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The Akron Fossils & Science Center is a museum located in Copley Township, Ohio, USA, a few miles west of Akron, devoted to presenting creationism and the notion of intelligent design.HistoryIt was opened May 26, 2005, by William Sanderson II, a financial planner and former Cincinnati middle-school science teacher. Sanderson has an MBA from Malone University in Canton, Ohio, and a BSc degree in education from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Exhibits tend to the hands-on. Touchable displays include a woolly mammoth jawbone, fossils, dinosaur teeth, bones and eggs, a mastodon skeleton, and castings of alleged Inca burial stones (never authenticated by scientists) depicting humans being killed by dinosaurs. A block-rolling game demonstrates the difficulty of randomly generating a 17 amino acid sequence to form a protein.Many of the center's projects are targeted at children, including "Truassic Park", a dinosaur-themed outdoor playground, a summer camp, a creationist canoe expedition, and a weekly high-school-level biology class. An ongoing study of a local creek is meant to teach young scientists in the area about data collection and procedures. Center staff participated in the opening of a similar but larger center, dubbed the Creation Museum, in Kentucky, but say the hands-on nature and focus on children of the Akron Fossils & Science Center sets it apart.