Pokémon Fossil Museum (Field Museum)

About This Event

Pokémon and paleontology in the same building, on purpose — real fossil specimens paired with the franchise's own fossil-Pokémon designs, aimed at both actual dinosaur kids and the generation that grew up catching them on a Game Boy.

Pokémon launched in Japan in 1996, created by Satoshi Tajiri at Game Freak — a video game built directly out of his own childhood obsession with catching bugs and tadpoles near his home outside Tokyo, reimagined as a game once that same landscape got paved over by urban development. The 'fossil Pokémon' idea baked into the games from the start draws on real extinct creatures, not invented ones: two decades of designs have referenced everything from 500-million-year-old invertebrates to actual Cretaceous-era dinosaurs, the same broad window of prehistory a place like the Field Museum specializes in.

Worth knowing: demand has been high since it opened, so advance booking is worth doing rather than assuming walk-up availability, and pricing is higher on weekends ($20/$14 adult/child) than weekdays ($18/$13).