Aurora Fossil Festival

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  • #5516
    Julie Niederkorn
    Participant

    Had a great time at the Aurora Fossil Festival!  It was great to see Bruce MacFadden (@bmacfadden), Joyce Drakeford (@joyce-drakeford), and Sue Coller (@scoller) from the PaleoBlitz.  Mary Harbison (@mary-harbison) and I had an exhibit geared towards elementary aged children.  The display included information on recording fossils, observation skills, identifying fossils, and 3D fossils.  I brought several riker boxes to display and ended up getting a couple of my fossils identified as land mammals from the Belgrade Quarry.  One was an astragalus from a small deer-like animal and the other was a tiny tooth from a weasel-type animal.  I was happy to donate them to the Smithsonian.  We spent a little time digging in the fossil matrix and Mary found a couple of very large Mako teeth and my best find was a squalodon tooth.  I look forward to going there again next year.

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    #5783
    Julie Niederkorn
    Participant

    Here are the photos the Richard Chandler took of the Belgrade mammal fossils.

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    #5827
    Lisa Lundgren
    Keymaster

    @julie-niederkorn whoa, this is great! I remember from last year’s festival that there was a large mix of adults and children in the exhibit hall. How many people would you say visited your table? Were people interested in a particular aspect (i.e. 3D fossils) or was there general interest?

    @kcrippen
    check out this exhibit from the Aurora Fossil Fest!

    #5828
    Kent Crippen
    Keymaster

    Julie, I like the documentation focus of your poster. This is an often overlooked or undervalued part of the process, but has a nice connection for young children who are just learning about and/or practicing their observation skills.

    #5846
    Julie Niederkorn
    Participant

    Hi Lisa and Kent

    It is hard to guess how many people stopped by the table because Mary and I took turns staffing the exhibit.  I would guess we spoke to 150 people.  Mary made the awesome poster titled “Keep a Record”, to convey the  importance of that step.  The 3D printed tooth appealed to both the adults and children, they had a lot of questions and were very interested in the 3D printing process.  The children also enjoyed having the opportunity to test their observation skills and to try and identify fossils, (especially since they were able to keep the fossils that they pulled out of the box).

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    #5850

    Hey Julie @julie-niederkorn,

    It is good to hear that you have enjoyed the Aurora Fossil Festival and let me tell you that I really like the “test your observation skills” boxes. That is a very good idea and brings also some kind of competitive character into it. Something most kids really like. The small models of turtles, sharks etc. are also very helpfull to get an idea where the fossils belong to. Very good job!!! Keep on doing it that way and we will have a lot of new well educated Paleo-Kids out there 😉

    Thank you for your support

    Ronny

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