Published on
What were you up to when you were nine years old?
The odds are you weren’t curating your very own museum exhibition, unlike Anderson Taylor, who has been officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the youngest male museum curator in the world.
At just nine years and 340 days old, this dinosaur-loving schoolboy from Cambridge, Illinois, US, opened the Cambridge Natural History Museum on 10 August 2024, being its sole owner and curator.
The museum features fossils, minerals, artifacts, natural specimens and educational displays.
“When I went to Scotland, I went to the Staffin Dinosaur Museum and that’s what inspired me to make this museum,” Anderson told Guinness World Records. “I’ve been into dinosaurs and fossils all my life.”
He added: “I found a building first, after doing tonnes of talks at the Village Office here in town. [The space] used to be the fire station, the village hall, and now it is the museum. After that, they started giving me items to display, display cases, and then after like a month or so we started getting funding.”
Anderson, now 11, is currently leading a fundraising campaign to buy the building where the museum is located. He has already raised $20,000.
He also shared that when he grows up, he wants to take his love of dinosaurs and fossils to the next level by becoming a palaeontologist. For now, he’ll have to “settle” for being a Guinness World Record breaker.
How many records had you broken when you were 11 years old?
Additional sources • Guinness World Records