OC Parks’ John D. Cooper Center is managed through a partnership with California State University, Fullerton. Since 2009, the partnership has been committed to the preservation, curation, and management of the fossils and artifacts within Orange County for the purpose of scientific research, outreach, and education.
The artifacts and fossils managed in the Cooper Center have been accumulated over the last four decades from sites in Orange County that have undergone Cultural Resource Management studies. Such studies are conducted as part of the permitting process for constructing houses, office buildings, roads, freeways and other urban developments. The collections at the Cooper Center include artifacts and fossils collected since the 1920s, some hundreds of millions of years old.
The Cooper Center is a research facility, and is not open to the public. However, visit the Cooper Center’s Exhibits page for places to go to view Orange County fossils and artifacts.
If you are a professional paleontologist or archaeologist interested in doing research in the Orange County collections, visit the Collections page for more information on arranging a visit.
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