The University of Wyoming’s geology museum in Laramie, with one of the best paleontology and geology collections in a small university town in the American West, closed last month — a casualty of the budget cuts rippling through many academic institutions. The resulting outcry has yielded enough private donations to open the museum on a parttime basis starting in August — but without its director.

Museum officials blame the $18 million reduction in state funding for the university. The private funds will pay only for security to keep the museum open for visitors, the university announced last week.

“I’m kind of skeptical that a security guard would be able to answer all of the questions about paleontology and geology that the museum handles constantly — or at least the staff used to handle constantly," former volunteer Beth Southwell told the Laramie Boomerang. Exhibits include the bones of Big Al the Allosaur (pictured).

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology wrote an open letter yesterday to the university trustees calling the closure “financially short-sighted”. It pointed out that the museum is extremely active in leading local paleontological excavations and getting local students involved in the science and history of their state.

(Full disclosure: Brent Breithaupt, who had run the museum, is a friend of a friend of mine. And I’m pretty sure I dropped some cash in a donations box when I visited a few years ago.)

Image: via Fossil Freak, on Flickr