By way of family businesses, the Villamette’s enterprise is anything but ordinary. Dealing with the macabre business of producing skeleton sets complete with dioramas, the Museum of Osteology was a natural extension for Jay Villamette to share his passion. With a flourish, we invite you to take a step into the shadowed world of SKELETONS. The grisly business of skeleton preparation begins with the dermestid beetles, likened to piranhas on land, as they strip flesh away from bone of fresh corpses. Careful preservation results in the ossified remains of creatures that roamed the earth for millennia before meeting their untimely demise. A 14-foot behemoth bleached elephant frame, rare Komodo dragons and even a Sumatran rhino add character to this ghastly collection.

As you walk through the 40 odd exhibits, you can peer at the steady changes in the cranial anatomy of humans over time. There are up to 500 animals and creatures of myth in this skeleton museum, which stands as the largest in the US. Here, centaurs are frozen mid-gallop and the bare calcified remains of whales fly through the air. Never would you have guessed that a walk through a graveyard could have so much to reveal.