The new Pokemon Fossil Museum has just been announced in Japan, letting fans comparethe game’s prehistoric Pokemon to their real-world counterparts.

The event takes Fossil Pokemon, a genre based on extinct animals, and compares them to their real-world counterparts.  It’s a traveling exhibition that kicks off on July 4th in Mikasa City Museum, where the exhibition will run until September 4th.

The next two stops are the Shimane Prefectural Museum of Mt Sanbe “Sahimei” (Fall 2021), followed by the Tokyo National Science Museum (Spring 2022) before making its final stop at Toyohashi Museum of Natural History in the Aichi Prefecture (summer 2022).

The Pokemon Fossil Museum will feature skeletal reconstructions of iconic fossil Pokemon, such as the T.Rex analogue Tyrantrum. According to the website this will be a “full-scale” reconstruction of the Pokemon, though it’s unknown how many more will be added considering the size of some of them.

The other really cool feature they’ll be adding is side-by-side diagrams comparing the Pokemon with their fossil counterparts. These even include illustrations of the extinct animals in a Ken Sugimori-esque art style, though it’s unknown if the illustrations were prepared by him. You’ll even be able to compare the skeletal diagrams of the Pokemon, marking the first time this many Pokemon have actually had their anatomy explained.

Despite being entirely fictional creatures, a good chunk of the Pokemon fandom expresses their love for the series by imagining them in more real-world settings. After all this is the entire basis of Pokemon Go, and part of how artists like RJ Palmer got involved with Detective Pikachu with his Realistic Pokemon fanart series. Palmer was not involved with this exhibition, however.

This exhibit seems entirely targeted at them, as well as being a great gateway into paleontology in general. There’s no plans currently to bring the event overseas, so you’ll have to hope whatever travel restrictions you may have will be gone before the exhibition ends next year.