Better than cable:

Dinos After Dark

If you've read Night at the Museum or seen the movies by the same name, you may have wondered what really goes on in museums after they close.

Actually, that's usually when I find myself there!  I volunteer at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, but because I teach on weekdays, mostly I am either helping out in the field or at the museum after dark.  I love poking around the museum when it's closed and we have the gorgeous Paleontology Hall to ourselves.

A few times a year, a small crew (usually 3-4 of us) assembles to dust the dinosaurs.

You might have visions of cute feather dusters, but Dave steers a lift to get up close to the fossils, and John wields a wand, attached by an air line to a compressor, to spray pressurized air that knocks the dust off the old bones.

My jobs include making sure the electrical cords and air line are not smashed by the wheels of the lift, vacuuming the petrified wood, dusting the wall mounts ever so carefully with a makeup brush, and occasionally vacuuming the tops of the walls that divide the space and guide your journey
through the hall.

Staring into the skeletal face of a dinosaur




or stepping into the ammonite garden to brush dust from the giant ammonites (my favorite fossil--doesn't everyone have a favorite fossil?) creates a more intimate relationship with the past than the casual visitor gets.  It feels as if I'm checking in with old friends.





The shadows are more dramatic at night, and the quiet shifts the hall to more of a meditative sanctuary than a field trip destination.

This time, though, we were not entirely alone. First, we were joined by painters, freshening up the white of the walls and exhibit bases.  Seeing the dinos in their booties, like respectful workmen on new carpet, made me giggle.

Next, we were joined by a school group from Louisiana who were spending the night at the museum.  Clipboards in hand, they were on a scavenger hunt mission in the hall.  On the heels of Screen-Free Week, I was overjoyed to hear one young man remark, "Dude, this is better than cable T.V.!  Seriously.  Look at all these dinosaurs!"

A big bone

Sometimes, in the blistering heat of a Seymour summer, it's just nice to sit in one place and move dirt.  Last week, Chris found more of Willi, our amazing articulated dimetrodon--the missing clavicle.  My assignment was to move dirt from what used to be our path into the quarry.  The fossils on the surface in this area are not "in place."  Instead, the whole section is slumping down and eroding out.  As I dug, I found dead leaves from the tree above me mixed in with the upper layers of matrix.  Because the layer has been compromised, this means that when I found small bones, their location does not provide very helpful information as they are no longer in their original location.  We mark the collection bag with the name of the area, but we don't need to map the location of the finds. 

So I was peacefully sweating and quietly moving dirt and rocks . . . until I found a big hunk of bone.  A BIG hunk of bone.  Now I'd need to work very slowly and carefully.

As I brushed away the surrounding matrix to reveal the fossil, a tell-tale shape began to reveal itself.  Chris and Dave confirmed that it is an unusually large dimetrodon humerus.

Bringing Field Work into Focus

Maria Montessori writes, “Let us take the child out to show him real things instead of making objects which represent ideas and closing them in cupboards" (From Childhood to Adolescence).

Thus is the nature of field work.

Yesterday, was Field Day at our school, but due to rescheduling because of weather, our class was on a field trip instead.  "We're doing Field Work instead of Field Day.  I think ours is better," commented one child as our bus pulled away from the school.  I must say, I completely agree.





To go out of a classroom to enter the outside world

. . . is obviously to open an immense door to instruction.

--Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence

Field work allows us to "take the child out to show him real things."  We go out into the world beyond the classroom walls and live the experience of scientific process in an outdoor setting.









Five years ago, I had the pleasure and honor of participating in the Paleontology Field School for Educators, offered by the paleontologists from the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  This program is a unique opportunity to participate in the scientific process as museum paleontologists find, unearth, document, and remove fossils from the Red Beds of North Central Texas.  Rather than the clean, sterile impression imparted by a visit to a museum where we see only the end-result, field science is dirty.  It's experiential.  And it's a process.  Paleontologists are detectives, engaged in the puzzle-solving process of assembling clues, piecing together a picture of how portions of the earth's past might have looked.  As I continue to volunteer with the field team, our view of how this habitat might have looked 280 million years ago changes over time, as more evidence is gathered.


My own field science experiences have shifted my approach to field trips for children.  Instead of being passive observers on field trips, I am convinced that children need to become active participants in field work so that they begin to understand that science isn't a static set of facts.  It is a process by which we use evidence to build our understanding of the world around us (and demolish and reconstruct that understanding when the evidence requires).  The children need to dig their hands into the dirt and engage in inquiry, grappling with the questions, "What do we observe?  Are there any patterns?  What are some possible explanations for the evidence we're finding?  Are there any other possible explanations?"  It was this appreciation for field work that compelled me to write a Target Field Trip Grant so that I could take the children to the river's edge for fossil field work.


screening for tiny fossils such as shark teeth

To do this successfully, the children (rather than the environment) must be properly prepared with skills and tools (along with awareness of potential hazards).  For the past month or so, the children have been engaged in Timeline of Life research on the Eras, Periods, and Epochs of earth's history.  They have learned to classify organisms by five kingdoms (Monera/Bacteria, Protoctista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia), sort and graph animals as vertebrate or invertebrate, and then classify organisms from the animal kingdom by phylum.  In class, we modeled the process of vertebrate paleontology as I experienced it in the Red Beds.  The children worked with fossil matrix from the site where we would be digging to practice finding, sorting, and identifying fossils (mostly marine invertebrate) so that they would be primed to recognize the fossils found at this particular locality; classifying the mollusk fossils by class (bivalve, gastropod, scaphopod, or cephalopod); proper use of tools (including a sharp probe); and gathering and organizing data in the form of charts and graphs.  We gathered and organized tools (sharp probes, forceps, trowels, screwdrivers, brushes, straws, screens, magnifiers, measuring tapes & centimeter rulers, collection bags, field notebooks, field guides, and a field microscope) and discussed potential hazards (sharp tools, snakes, poison ivy, scorpions, a train trestle, a highway, and a major river) and how to keep ourselves safe.



consulting with David Temple, Associate Curator of
Paleontology, to identify a fossil

Our fossil field work cultivated curiosity and fostered some serious excitement about science.  It promoted an understanding of the process of field science, and it also allowed students to practice science process skills (observation, classification, identification, measurement, collection and analysis of data, inference, communication) and use the tools of science in an authentic context.  It allowed them to consult with geology and paleontology experts (and view scientists as accessible resources), but it also allowed them to see themselves as scientists.



brushing dirt away to reveal fossils

teasing tiny fossils from the matrix





using a screwdriver to pry matrix away from the bank of the river
 

using a field guide to identify fossils

taking notes in personal field notebook



collaborating to classify fossil finds



organizing data in a chart






How many fossilized burrows (trace fossils)
fit in your backpack?



recording data in the group's field notebook

There's a Book for That!

If You Are a Hunter of Fossils by Byrd Baylor

From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan

In My Own Backyard by Julie Kurjian

Fossils Tell of Long Ago by Aliki

Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter by Sally M. Walker

Finding the First T. Rex by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

There's a song for that, too!
National Fossil Day Song by NPS/Jeff Wolin
Fossil Rocks by Tom McFadden
I am a Palentologist by They Might Be Giants
 

Thank you to Target Field Trip Grants, Becks Prime, and the Sarmiento Family for generously sponsoring our expensive bus (with a bathroom in the back).  Thank you to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and Associate Curator of Paleontology David Temple for generously providing seven volunteers and staff who served as experts for the children's field work.  Thank you to the nine chaperones who joined us to ensure our children were safe and focused on investigating.



Peer into the Past



examining a tiny gastropod

We have been gearing up for our upcoming field trip.  We will travel near Bryan, Texas to a fossil locality known as Stone City, where the children will do fossil field work, digging into the past to collect, identify, and tally marine (mostly invertebrate) fossils from the Eocene Epoch (about 45 million years ago) when most of Texas was covered by sea.

To prepare my young paleontologists for this task, it was important to practice safe and appropriate use of tools, as well as training their brains to recognize the shapes, patterns, and colors of some likely finds at the site. 

To do this, each group received a tray of matrix collected at Stone City.  They also received a set of fossil guides and the paleontology tools we will be using: brushes, forceps, a metric ruler, a sharp probe (a ceramics needle), a Sharpie, and magnifiers.

another tiny gastropod

The children combed through the matrix, using the forceps to carefully tease out tiny fossils.



tiny gastropods

Because this was a marine habitat during the Eocene Epoch, we find a lot of mollusks--mostly gastropods but also scaphopods, bivalves, and the rare cephalopod (squid "beak").  Check out how tiny these finds are! 



bryozoa, coral

We also find coral, bryozoa, otoliths (~fish inner ear), ray teeth, and shark teeth.

otoliths



using a hand lens

The children examined each fossil closely. 

It's a real advantage to have
 a microscope in the classroom.

They practiced using the fossil guides to identify their finds.

To record and communicate their findings, each child selected some fossils for which to create fossil identification pages. 

The child recorded the date, fossil locality, era, period, epoch, fossil name, and classification (phylum and class) and included a detailed illustration.

The illustration was labeled with the fossil's measurement.

 

Resources for Stone City (near Bryan, Texas)

produced by the Houston Gem and Mineral Society

Map

Q&A about the site

Stone City fossil ID cards

Fossil guide

Check Brazos River depth (~7' on the day we went)



Bones below the surface

Last week's fast-forward erosion revealed some interesting finds that our scientists were interested in investigating further.  Today, we strapped on our vertebrate paleontologist hats (Oh, yes!  There are hats!), and got busy.








shark coprolite

When I am working with the paleontology dig team in Seymour, we almost always spend some time prospecting. Basically, this means we wander around in 120+ degree Fahrenheit temps in areas we haven't yet found fossils, looking at the ground and hoping to find evidence of a new site.  If someone spies something (a bone, a footprint, a tooth, coprolites sprinkled everywhere, an entire dimetrodon vertebral column just lying there in the dirt), 
Dr. Bakker shouts, "Find more!" and the rest of us congregate and start crawling around on the ground.  If a site proves fruitful, we spend more time there, carefully excavating the fossils, documenting as we go.

Dr. Robert Bakker

Today, my own team of diggers modeled (in climate-controlled comfort) the process we use in the field.  After fossils were discovered, the team selected a name for the site.  The fossils were separated from the surrounding matrix, with great care not to cause damage in the process.  Very specialized tools such as dollar store makeup brushes and Subway straws are used for this task.

brushing sediment from the bone



brushing off Willi

using a straw to blow sediment away from the bone

The fossil is measured in place.



To preserve the evidence, clear plastic
is placed over the bones to create a map.
A compass is used to identify North on the map.

Each bone is traced to document the bones' position
in relationship to one another before the fossils are removed
 and the evidence is destroyed.





The children apply their knowledge
of skeletal anatomy to identify
the bones of their mystery animal.





Bones are removed from their surrounding matrix
and pieced together, like a puzzle, if possible.

The surrounding matrix is screened
to check for tiny bones, such as toes and teeth,
that may have been missed
as the larger bones were removed.

While deposition covers dead organisms and allows them to fossilize, it is erosion that reveals them, allowing us access to layers of rock containing evidence of life from millions of years ago.  In Seymour, Texas it is life from the Permian Period of the late Paleozoic Era (about 280 million years ago, millions of years before the dinosaurs!) that is now exposed on or near the surface.  In Bryan, Texas, the exposed layers are from a time much more recent--the Eocene Epoch, the second portion of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era (about 45 million years ago).  River banks, where water has worn away layers of time, are excellent places for fossil hunting.  So are areas where people have scraped away the earth, such as road cuts, construction sites, and even a spot intended as a dump.

 

There's a Book for That!

Barnum's Bones: How Barnum Brown Discovered the Most Famous Dinosaur in the World by Tracey Fern

Finding the First T. Rex by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

If You Are a Hunter of Fossils by Byrd Baylor

From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan

In My Own Backyard by Julie Kurjian

Fossils Tell of Long Ago by Aliki

Digging Up Dinosaurs by Aliki

Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter by Sally M. Walker