While public health orders have shut the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre to visitors, the team has been using this time to make improvements at the museum.

That includes constructing a new fossil skeleton display complete with custom steel brackets in order to show a fossil in the correct anatomical position.

Several new exhibits are also in the works at the Morden-based museum.

An exhibition on plate tectonics launched last year before the province clamped down on public health guidelines, resulting in the museum's temporary closure. In addition, Cuetara says they just completed the installation of an interactive microscope exhibition.

Crews are now assembling a real fossil Mosasaur in its entirety, which Cuetara says is a first for the CFDC.

"We have very good pieces, but due to a lack of space our more spectacular specimens are in our collection room and people aren't able to see the quality of our fossils, so we are trying to improve the presence of real fossils in our exhibitions," he explains.

Meantime, work continues to digitize the CFDC's entire collection.

Once complete, Cuetara says the museums' nearly 20,000 fossils will be accessible online and become a very important research tool, noting last year the CFDC sign a research agreement with the University of Manitoba.