Pokémon is a big deal in my family.

My husband started collecting trading cards when he was little. He played Pokémon games, watched Pokémon cartoons, and grew up to run a video game music record label that recently put out a live jazz quintet cover album of classic Pokémon tunes.

Now our almost 4-year-old son is getting into the franchise, too. Over Christmas, he received his first pack of Pokémon cards. With some generous donations from dad’s collection (which until recently lived in shoeboxes in our basement), he’s built Pokémon decks and learned the basics of battling. Normally an untameable ball of energy, our son can spend hours staring at his favorite Pokémon card, Charmeleon. A copy of the bipedal, dinosauresque lizard with a fire-tipped tail is taped to the side of his bed.

I didn’t grow up on Pokémon (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was more my jam), but as a mom, I’ve come to appreciate the many learning opportunities the franchise has to offer. We use Pokémon cards to practice numbers and words, sounding out the names of the characters and guessing how much HP they have. My son is also into dinosaurs, and when we discover a Pokémon that looks like, say, a T-rex, we talk about the similarities and differences. Earlier in my life, I might have raised an eyebrow at the idea of an entire natural history museum exhibit devoted to the paleontology of Pokémon, but now, I totally get it.

And believe it or not, such a thing exists. First conceived by a Japanese museum curator and Pokémon fan, and developed in partnership with Pokémon Company, the “Pokémon Fossil Museum” debuted at the Mikasa City Museum in Hokkaido, Japan, in July 2021. For nearly five years, it has toured the Pokémon-obsessed nation’s natural history museums, allowing visitors to explore the natural history of their favorite Pokémon with the help of Excavator Pikachu. By the spring of 2025, the exhibit had surpassed a million visitors.

Now, the Pokémon Fossil Museum has gone global. Today, the renowned Chicago Field Museum opened its version of Pokémon Fossil Museum, marking the first time the exhibit has traveled abroad. 

To learn more about this unique exhibit and what it has to offer fans of all ages, I spoke with Arjan Mann, the Field Museum’s assistant curator of fossil fishes and early tetrapods. Mann grew up watching Pokémon and keeps the card of his favorite non-fossil specimen, Arcanine, in his museum badge. Helping develop an exhibit that bridges his childhood passion with his adult career was a dream come true for Mann, who believes the final product offers something for people of all ages.

Here’s our conversation, condensed and lightly edited for clarity:

Maddie Stone: What is the Pokémon Fossil Museum, and how did it get its start?

Arjan Mann: The exhibit was initially conceived in Japan by a researcher Daisuke Aiba, who was a big Pokémon fan and went with the idea to the Pokémon Company. The exhibit developed there and became a traveling show. Then, a connection was made on our end by one of our researchers, [chief preparator]Akiko Shinya, and the idea was floated to have this as a Field Museum exhibit. We’re adapting the exhibit for American audiences, editing the content, adding new science, new discoveries from the Field Museum that’ll be featured in the exhibit, such as SUE the T.rex. [Editor’s note: At more than 40 feet long and 13 feet tall, SUE is both the largest and the most complete T.rex skeleton ever discovered.] Our exhibit is going to be in a way our own exhibit, but the initial idea came from Japan.

Maddie: A lot of people are interested in Pokémon who might not otherwise come to a natural history museum. Do you see this as a way to connect with a wider audience, or a different audience?

Arjan: I think you just hit the nail on the head. I think it’s a way to connect with both a wider and different audience; connect with young people. Bring natural history to people in a different way that highlights pop culture, and the pop culture significance, through the genre of Pokémon. There’s also a unique case to be made that Pokémon in particular draws a lot from natural history and a lot of Pokémon are actually inspired by fossil animals.

Maddie: What should visitors to the exhibit expect to see?

Arjan: They can expect to see their favorite fossil Pokémon that have their replications designed by Pokémon Company. Some of these will be skeleton-like representations of the animals. Some of them will be flesh models. And you’ll expect to see similar [Field Museum] favorites, like pieces of SUE the T. rex and the Chicago Archaeopteryx, which will be highlighted in the exhibit and compared to [the Pokémon] Tyrantrum and Archeops. I’ve always been into the dome-headed pachycephalosaurs, so Ramparados is featured in the exhibit.

Maddie: What other museum content is being folded in?

Arjan: The museum content will be designed mostly through our science, and the science that we’re doing on our specimens. There’ll be some interesting Mazon Creek fossils highlighted in the exhibit. Mazon creek is a lagerstätte [Editor’s note: lagerstätte is a sedimentary layer with exceptional fossil preservation] in Illinois which has some of the earliest reptiles and amphibians, so we’re highlighting some local science through there. We’re adapting some of the text for an American audience, and adding our own spin on things. 

Maddie: Has the museum done anything like this before? 

Arjan: I don’t think the Field Museum has quite done anything on this scale regarding a pop culture IP like this before. When I was at the Smithsonian, I had previous experience working with an animal Kermitops we described and named it in honor of Kermit [Editor’s note: Kermitops gratus is a 270-million year-old frog ancestor that Mann and other researchers named after Disney’s iconic green Muppet  in 2024]. I’d say this is a lot more similar to that, working with something that has the love of the peoples’ hearts, feeling the need to do justice to that IP and that brand, as well as keeping true to the science.

Maddie: Do those two goals–staying true to a fictional character’s brand as well as the science–ever come in conflict with one another? How do you navigate that?

Arjan:  You don’t want to overcompare things. Pokémon exist in their own world. They have their own natural history; their own ontology. They’re not a fictional representation of something. The real world influences—real world animals, paleontology, natural history—are telling their own parallel story.

I think you need to understand where the idea came from, and how science can inspire creativity. It’s not one-to-one, it’s a circle, an intermingling of these ideas, and it’s really about creativity. And we use that creativity in our science all the time.

Maddie: How has the exhibit been received in Japan?

Arjan: It’s a blockbuster wherever it goes, as far as I know. I just came back from the Tokyo Museum. And it was still doing really well. [Editor’s note: Mann is describing a visit to the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo last fall. They are an organizer for the new exhibition, along with the Field Museum and Pokemon Company.]

Maddie: What are you hopeful visitors to the Field Museum will take away from this exhibit?

Arjan: Above everything, I want them to enjoy the exhibit. That’s my number one goal. Number 2, if they learn something about natural history and the influences of natural history in today’s society, not just in what we take for granted, but also how it can be used to create new things in our world, that’s the second message I personally would like people to understand. 

And then of course, I want everyone to enjoy their favorite fossil Pokémon and reminisce about how Pokémon has influenced their life. I grew up watching the TV shows. I remember episodes of the TV shows where they actually explored the fossil Pokémon worlds. I was a kid, obsessed with dinosaurs anyway. If you get some of that nostalgia and childhood intrigue back, that’s another strong success this exhibit could have.

For me it’s been a dream working on an exhibit that has such a unique and personal childhood connection. It’s not something in a million years I’d thought I’d have the opportunity to do.

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