Be still, my heart

Do my friends know me or what?  I arrived home a few weeks ago to find a package on my doorstep.  A mystery box, waiting there with delights hidden inside . . . more exciting than I could have imagined! 


Dino valentines, shipped across Texas from the lovely Mrs. D.















Oh, but it gets even better! 

They are 3D Effect fossils, which meant that when I held them one direction, they looked like this.  Prehistoric creatures with happy Valentine messages--and there was even a dimetrodon with the corny message, "I'm a big fan."  Science nerd heaven.











Tilted the other way, the skin and background disappeared to reveal the fossil skeletons of these prehistoric critters.  Oh my goodness, the squeally excitement when I discovered this!  I had to run out and stock up on two more boxes of these fossils finds. 

When I showed my mother, giddy with excitement, I was appalled to hear her wonder out loud, "But will the girls like them?"  Excuse me?  Of course girls like fossils.  Why wouldn't they?  I felt especially vindicated on Valentine's Day when two students brought the same fossilicious Valentines as I . . . and they were both girls!

In addition to the Valentines, Mrs. D also managed to dig up a fossil of another sort.

Check out the publication date.  1959!

This little gem includes a dimetrodon (NOT a dinosaur),

[read about the HMNS paleo field team's amazing dimetrodon find] 

diplocaulus (also Permian and not a dinosaur),

and eryops!

As if all of that was not paleo perfect, another friend surprised me with an incredible, jointed T-rex necklace!