Visitors
Greetings from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology! Our unique institution is located on the beautiful campus of The Webb Schools. In fact, we are the only paleontology museum located on a high school campus in the nation. Our museum mission is to serve Southern California as an educational resource, to act as a center of paleontological research for the international scientific community, and to provide a unique curricular ingredient for The Webb Schools.
The Alf Museum was founded by and named after Dr. Raymond M. Alf, a math and science teacher who first took Webb students to the desert in search of fossils in the early 1930s. In 1936, Alf and student Bill Webb found the skull of a new species of fossil pig, or peccary. The discovery of "the peccary" sparked in Alf a life-long commitment to the study of paleontology and led to the founding of the museum that bears his name. After the discovery of "The Peccary," student fossil collecting trips were known as peccary trips. Over 95% of the 70,000 fossils in the museum's collection were unearthed by students and staff on peccary trips.
In 1998, the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology gained national accreditation from the American Association of Museums, the highest honor a museum can achieve. Thus, the Alf Museum is now the only accredited museum located on a high school campus in the United States.
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