A hidden gem of a museum with a treasure trove of fossils carefully tucked inside sits perched above Cayuga Lake.

With over 7 million specimens, including a mastodon skeleton found in Upstate New York, the Paleontological Research Institution and its Museum of the Earth boast one of the largest fossil collections in the United States. It is a place where visitors can touch dinosaur bones and even take home fossils.

But the museum is now on the brink of extinction.

If the Paleontological Research Institution doesn’t raise $1 million for its mortgage payment by New Year’s Eve, the Museum of the Earth in Ithacawill be foreclosed, WBNG reported on Monday.

“It could vanish,” Warren Allmon, the institution’s director, told WBNG. “This could close. This could all disappear.”

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The Museum of the Earth in Ithaca has narrowly avoided foreclosure after raising millions in donations.

The museum had until New Year's Eve to pay off its $3 million mortgage debt. Financial woes have plagued the museum in recent years after a long-time donor was unable to fulfill a $30 million promised gift to the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI).

Warren Allmon, PRI’s director, said the mortgage was paid because donors, big and small, stepped in with their contributions.

“It came from absolutely everywhere. It came from these million dollar donors. It came from people who wrote us $5 checks. Most movingly, it came from two eight year olds,” Allmon said.

Over 2,000 people donated to PRI in 2025, Allmon said.

The Museum of the Earth is home to one of the largest fossil collections in the country.

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