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What is the InfoQuest Foundation?
InfoQuest is a non-profit, tax-exempt (501(c)(3)) private operating foundation dedicated to increasing the public's scientific knowledge and enhancing technological competence to enable young and old around the world to apply the findings of modern science to their lives.
 InfoQuest Foundation was initially funded by a generous grant of funds from computer software entrepreneurs Larry Dingus and "Shammy" Dingus, as well as from Dr. Lowell Dingus, Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History and author of several books on dinosaurs and their evolution. Additional information is available in the following files: |
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Form 1023 Tax Exemption |
FY 2006 Tax Return |
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Supporting the quest for knowledge and understanding |
Introduction
The Earth, which has so generously supported a rich diversity of life forms for billions of years, now faces a number of crises: Many prominent scientists conclude that animal and plant species are becoming extinct at an alarmingly rapid rate; sea levels are rising; climatic change is accelerating; and the ozone layer has been partially destroyed. Through scientific research we can better understand the causes of past climatic and biologic revolutions on Earth, helping us to make informed judgements regarding our planet's health and continuing habitability.
The need to incorporate science and technology into our lives has never been more urgent. Regrettably, science education is not meeting the need to train young people and adults to face the dangerous and disturbing challenges of the 21st century. Studies show that fewer than half of the American public even understand that the earth revolves around the sun once a year, or that humans evolved from earlier species.
The InfoQuest Foundation is actively addressing issues that are of central relevance for our daily lives and the future of our planet, on behalf of both ourselves and our children. To this critically important purpose, InfoQuest Foundation has committed its efforts and shaped its program.
Communicating Scientific Discoveries
InfoQuest Foundation is committed to communicating results of current research in paleontology, geology, evolutionary studies and other natural sciences. A major goal of InfoQuest's program is the Foundation's effort to improve the public's access to scientists and scientific information.
The InfoQuest web site provides a central point of access to information about new discoveries for both the general public as well as scientists and science writers.
At another level, InfoQuest is actively at work seeking to stimulate the interest of children and young people in science. InfoQuest's programs build on children's intense fascination with dinosaurs and other ancient life forms to inspire a passion for learning about science. The Foundation funds in-school programs, which provide students the rare opportunity to handle and examine real dinosaur fossils. To date, these in-school programs have been focused in metropolitan New York.
InfoQuest is also supporting the development of new curriculum materials on the natural sciences.
Scientific Research
InfoQuest Foundation conducts and funds original scientific research to acquire a greater and deeper understanding of life and nature.
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In cooperation with the Mongolian Academy of Science and the American Museum of Natural History, InfoQuest helped to support the 1997 and 1998 expeditions to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia to map important fossil-bearing geological rock units. These expeditions have discovered exquisitely preserved new fossils that help fill gaps in our knowledge about the evolutionary transition between birds and dinosaurs, and the early evolution of mammals.
Work has continued in Montana, with funding from InfoQuest, to refine the time scale in North America for the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs and the beginning of the Age of the Mammals.
