Pokémon Fossil Museum Exhibition Opens at Chicago's Field Museum

The Pokémon Fossil Museum exhibition opened at Chicago's Field Museum on Friday. The show is the first time the exhibition has been displayed outside Japan. It will remain at the Field Museum through April 11, 2027. The exhibition was first shown in Japan in 2021 and toured the country until April 2026.

The exhibition features real fossils from the Field Museum collection, including the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known as Sue and the museum's Archaeopteryx specimen. It also includes life-sized cast sculptures of fossil Pokémon drawn from the nine generations of games released between 1996 and 2025.

Color coding distinguishes the Pokémon sculptures from the real fossils throughout the galleries. One color marks Pokémon elements and another marks real-world specimens, with text panels also separated to avoid confusion.

The Pokémon Company and the Field

Museum organized the exhibition with contributions from the Japan National Museum of Nature and Science. The show incorporates fossils already held by the Field Museum alongside the Pokémon sculptures. "This really truly is spanning the entirety of paleontology and our fossil natural history, so it will be representations of every type of fossil, even amber, in the exhibit," Arjan Mann, assistant curator of fossil fishes and early tetrapods at the Field Museum, told ABC News.

"It is 100% color-coded from the minute you walk in the door. One color is Pokémon, and another color indicates this is from the real world, and we repeat that throughout the whole exhibition," Anastasia DeMaio, an exhibitions developer at the Field Museum, told the Chicago Tribune.

In the Pokémon games, players locate fossils and restore the creatures they represent, including versions of trilobites, ammonites, pterodactyls, Tyrannosaurus rex, and Archaeopteryx. The exhibition uses the same theme to connect game mechanics with actual paleontology.

"For more than 29 years, the Pokémon brand has been adored by fans around the world, stoking fascination and curiosity for the franchise's many iconic Pokémon, their lore, and the unique world they inhabit … the Pokémon Fossil Museum will inspire visitors to make new discoveries about some of their favorite Pokémon while offering a pathway to science," Jaap Hoogstraten, head of exhibitions at the Field Museum, said in a release issued in May 2025.