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This past Saturday, my family treated me to a nice day out to celebrate my birthday. My lovely wife asked what I wanted to do. I took the opportunity to ask to visit a museum I have been wanting to visit. We packed ourselves into the Corolla, and headed to Springfield Massachusetts, to pick my son up from college. 50 minutes later, he was getting into the car. Off we went. Our destination was the Beneski Museum of Natural History, at Amherst College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. This museum, which is free to the public, houses the Hitchcock Ichnology Collection, one of the largest collections of dinosaur footprints anywhere. Edward Hitchcock is considered a pioneer in, if not the father of, Ichnology. He started collecting the footprints in 1835, 7 years prior to Sir Richard Owen naming the taxon, Dinosauria. A minister, then a geologist, and the third president of Amherst College. He wrote several papers about the footprints, laying groundwork for the paleontological study of ichnology. Quite the Gentleman Scholar. While the museum does have many other fossils and casts, and quite an impressive mineral collection, ... the Hitchcock Ichnology Collection is the cornerstone of the museum. The museum is free of charge to the public. You can park anywhere on campus on the weekends. I highly recommend this place to anyone interested in fossils, or minerals. So without any further ado, ... on to the pictures. First the drawers -