Mylo Mundwiller says he’s been interested in dinosaurs since he was a baby.
“His baby nursery was even dinosaur-themed before he even really started deciding the things that he liked,” Mylo’s mom, Maggie Mundwiller, said. “That just happened to be one of them.”
As he got older, Mylo’s fascination with dinosaurs grew, as did his collection of toys — and the request for new ones never seemed to cease. Not wanting to buy her son a new toy every day, though not wanting to tell Mylo ‘no’ every time he asked for an addition to his collection, Maggie came up with a plan.
“I don’t want to keep saying ‘no ’; I have to find a way to say ‘yes.’ So what can we do?” Maggie said. “We talked about it, and we decided we could start a trading post. It actually started with just a few dinosaurs on the sewer lid and a little hand-painted sign that we made.”
As word got out, the trading post — Mylo’s Dino Trading Post — moved to a free little library box, then grew to another free little library box, before its current form, a larger colorful cabinet, emerged. Though dinosaurs remain the primary focus, the post has expanded its offerings; items such as slap bracelets, stuffed animals, books, fidgets and squishes have appeared. Maggie says “all trades are welcome.”
“Everybody loves it. It’s just really, really different. We’ve had a lot of people that are excited. We have people that come weekly and monthly — we have ‘regulars,’” Maggie said. “I’m a single mom … we don’t go to church or anything like that, so creating a sense of community is really important to me, and it’s given us that. We’ve met awesome people … we’ve connected with so many neighbors. There are just so many great things that come from it.”
Mylo’s enthusiasm for the prehistoric giants led the family to connect with Kristen Tippit of Paleoheritage — a nonprofit organization focused on fossils. The three met about a year ago at an urban fossil hunt, essentially a treasure hunt for fossils.
“I was super impressed because Mylo hung the whole time. He listened, and he looked at everything. I have a six-year-old as well … (Mylo) was totally in it, and mine was everywhere else,” Tippit said, laughing.
This meeting came at the perfect time as Paleoheritage was in the early stages of planning a community event — a “pop-up one-day fossil museum extravaganza,” per Tippit — focused on all things paleo, and Mylo’s Dino Trading Post fit right in. After painstaking planning, this event, since titled the Prehistoric Life Show, will be held at the Saint Louis Science Center on Oct. 17 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
“We’ve got collections of fossils. We’ve got fossil experts — you can bring in a rock that you found and see if it’s a fossil,” Tippit said. “We have some people … bringing shale to split and gravel to sift through. People are going to leave with fossils, with traded items, with crafts that they make. They can put feathers on dinosaurs.”
Mylo is personally most excited about making jewelry with crinoids, a type of small circular fossil, while Maggie again emphasized the importance of community events like these create.
“I really love the idea of making something that feels unapproachable completely approachable and completely relatable, and people who are willing to be humble and help you explore and learn. Mylo and I are not fossil people. This is not our normal world. We just really love dinosaurs and trading and community. I think that’s really the highlight for me. And for him, I mean, trading toys is obviously pretty rad,” Maggie said.
