Month: June 2026

Near the end of May, the Field Museum’s newest rotating exhibition opened: the Pokémon Fossil Museum. (You probably figured that out from the title of the post.) Naturally, we avoided going immediately after opening due to potential crowding, opting to wait a month and visit on a weekday. That may have reduced the overall crowding at the museum; the exhibition still sold out for the day. The exhibition tickets were timed entries, we scheduled ours for mid-afternoon to avoid being rushed in our arrival or lunch.

Not having visited the Field Museum in over a decade, we knew we weren’t going to cover everything in a day, especially with a special exhibition included. We opted to precede our Pokémon exploration with a visit to the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet & SUE the T. rex, which segued pleasantly into the overlapping information at the Pokémon Fossil Museum.

But what is the Pokémon Fossil Museum? It’s an exhibit comparing special Pokémon, theoretically restored from fossils, to “ancient life from our world”. What can I say? Someone decided Pokémon should be educational, and they did a delightful job of it. Each Pokémon fossil on display was paired with something from our world, such as the combination of a Tyrantrum and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Pokémon world items were a blue background and our world had red, making it easy to distinguish between them; both included detailed explanations in English and Spanish. The T-Rex skull pictured is a replica of SUE’s, the most complete T-Rex ever found, who is housed in the Evolving Planet exhibit.

As we stepped into the special exhibition, we were each handed a Pokémon card… a reprint of an existing card, rather than a special promo one. Apparently a special promo card caused some problems at a previous location for this traveling exhibit. Each admission does get you access to the special Pokémon store across the hall, with a limit of 5 items, no repeats allowed, per admission. This includes an Excavator Pikachu plush that they seemed to have in remarkably large quantities, though everything in the store is “while supplies last.” (Some of the items are also available at the Pokémon Center.) For those of us that play Pokémon Go, there’s an Excavator Pikachu available in the game in and around the exhibit, as well as some themed stickers and themed Pokéstop/Gym images.

Sadly, due to time constraints, we did not see all of the regular exhibits or any other special exhibit that day, so I expect we’ll have to return to the Field Museum again soon to remedy that.

If you recall, back in April we visited three zoos – and two airports – in just over a week. The first zoo we visited had Fahlo bracelets at some of the stores, which was the first time I had heard of the organization. The concept sounded appealing, purchasing an accessory to digitally track an animal and supporting the conservation efforts, yet we managed to leave without acquiring any of their items.

And then we saw them again, at the airport, alongside Fahlo stuffed animals. And we knew, since we were flying on Southwest out of Chicago Midway, that we’d be coming past those same stores when we flew home a few days later. On our return a few days later, I acquired a soft hammerhead shark, though the tracking is for a tiger shark named Summer. Different animal types support different organizations; my new plush support Saving the Blue, which focuses on threatened marine organisms.

Each Fahlo object comes with a QR code to scan, which links you to the supported animal on their app, showing you where they’ve mostly recently been tracked and providing additional details, like how far they’ve traveled since the tracking began (March 9th, in her case) and their average speed. Summer has travelled over 2000 miles since acquiring her tracking tag!

More recently, in the app, there was an offer for a red panda bracelet, which tracks Ninamma, who lives in a protected forest in Nepal. Similar to Summer’s tracker, the app shows a dot for each date she’s been tracked dating back to December 20th. Compared to Summer’s relatively stable placement off the coast of northern Florida and southern Georgia for the past month, Ninamma’s map (in the app, not pictured here) looks chaotic… but has only covered 239 miles. Presumably there’s an advantage in distance to being aquatic. However, Nimanna’s updates periodically include new photos.

In both cases, there may be gaps in their tracking: Ninamma’s because of the mountainous terrain or dense canopy cover, and Summer’s when she’s moving in deep water. The optional notifications will notify you when there’s a new ping on the map for your sponsored animal. Well, a potentially delayed ping, to protect the animal based on standards set with the partnering conservation organizations.