Impromptu Field Trip on Saturday

Steve got an email late last week about an exhibit that was going to be open for Saturday only at the Museum of Nature and Science. The subject of the exhibit? Fossils that were found just a few weeks ago in Snowmass Colorado! Fossils of mammoths, mastadons and a giant sloth. How cool is that?! Here is an article I found online about the discovery. History in the making is something you just don't want to miss out on. So, we went. I didn't bring my camera, thinking they wouldn't allow photos. Um, I was wrong. Steve pulled out his phone and took some pictures. And I thought you might like to take a peek. I tried to edit the pictures so you could see the detail better.

 This is the inside of the horn core. The horn core is the inside of the tusk. The tusk is actually a sheath over the horn core.

 These animals had huge teeth. And they get 4 sets over their lifetime.

 When one tooth is ground down too far, another set moves in to take its place.

Here you can kind of see the other set getting ready to move.

They think this is from an 18 year old female.

 Here is the tusk, the horn core is from inside this.

Another shot of the horn core.

 They had a few activities for the kids to participate in.

They also had these life size banner posters so you could get a feel for just how large these animals were.

 

Jessica loves to get her face painted!

 Cute mastadon, eh?

 Amy liked her hat.

This is the leg bone of something, I don't remember what.

They had some other fossils on display that weren't from the recent findings.

If you look by that lady in the green sweater, you can see the pelvis they had hung up. It's at the height it would have actually been for that animal (I think it was a mastadon...it was huge!)

Anyway, it was a fascinating exhibit.

After we were done, we had to go into the Gems and Minerals exhibit and then the Mummies exhibit.

Amy wanted to go to others, but we'd been there a few hours by this point and the place was packed. 

Good thing we have a membership and can go back whenever we want. Except to see these fossils they just found. It was so worth the trip over, I think.

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