 "Photo:")
Children sifted through a blue plastic sandbox, vigorously searching for links to the past.
It wasn't exactly Ashfall Fossil Beds, but they didn't seem to care.
The "dig site" was just a part of the "Dinosaur Detectives" program, held Saturday in the Lincoln Children's Museum.
Andrea Bair, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student in geosciences, helped the young scientists search through the sand.
What they found, she said, were real invertebrate fossils from the time before dinosaurs, when an ocean covered Nebraska.
These remains, donated by the University of Nebraska State Museum, were not much use scientifically, she said, but the children were enthusiastic about the pursuit of science.
"We're giving kids the opportunity to find them, discover them and put their name on them in the museum," Bair said.
Paper footprints led into the room where the junior paleontologists also learned the differences between meat-eaters and plant-eaters, the dinosaurs' sizes and how they hatched from eggs like modern reptiles.
Adrianne Prokupek, a graduate student in genetics, said her station had concrete moldings of actual casts of dinosaur footprints. She said the children could make crayon etchings of the footprints, and she used them to teach the differences in how dinosaurs walked.
"How many toes do you have?" she asked two children. "Don't look at your feet."
Joel McCleary, director of education at the Lincoln Children's Museum, said "Dinosaur Detectives" was not a new idea. The program, he said, formerly was held at Morrill Hall, but with the university's budget cuts, UNL no longer presented the event.
McCleary said he used to work in Morrill Hall and thought it was important for children to be exposed to science at an early age.
With some help from the University of Nebraska State Museum, "Dinosaur Detectives" found its way to the Children's Museum, he said.
Since the Children's Museum deals with early childhood, he said, an experience in learning there can be a springboard to scientific curiosity when children grow older.
Beth Wooster, a teacher in the Lincoln Public School district, said she brought her children, David, 8, and Alek, 4, to the event. Dinosaurs, she said, fascinated Alek, and she hoped the program furthered his curiosity.
"He's not really patient, but he's having a good time," she said.
Be the first to comment on this article!