Triceratops sculptures done in Fluorite, Heliotrope Jasper and Jasper.
Hand Knapped Agate Arrowhead
Schorl - Black variation of Tourmaline
Minas Gerais, Brazil & United Kingdom
Fluorite
Minerva Mine, Cave in the Rock, Hardin County, Illinois, USA
tesseract. mitosis.
Fire Quartz.
(Source: amber-skies-with-dragons)
Every Saturday I volunteer as an on staff paleontologist. The school that I go to has a deal with the museum that all of the Pale Kids get to volunteer there and help out with anything. I am an undergrad, but kids don’t need to know the technical stuff, especially when they’re super excited to talk to someone that loves dinosaurs as much as them. I’ve seen a lot of parents that say, “Oh, ___ loves dinosaurs. His favorite is T.Rex.” Then their child quickly corrects them with, “No mom/dad, it’s actually ____.” Then I get to talk to them about how awesome their favorite is. This is something that makes my day every single time.
This past Saturday there was a kid that was traveling all around the west coast going to different museums/science places for his fourth grade class. I showed him a ton of stuff and let him hold a few bones. His mom got a bunch of pictures and he ended up tearing up because he was so happy. His mom thanked me at least twenty times on her way out because I had really made a connection with this kid. He was so happy when he left that he asked for a picture with me so that he could tell his class that he met a real paleontologist. Like I said, when kids are excited, they don’t need to know the technical stuff.
This is a great story and makes me have warm-fuzzies. Sounds like you made a real impression on that kid, and that’s really special!
Fractured layers exposed on the face of the Teniya Beach rock slide, Japan. (Okinawa Soba)
Azurite from France
#1 Unknown crystal encrusted fossil shell - horn coral?
#2 Loess baby
#3 Chert lens with limonite concretions
#4 Petrified wood
All found in and around Columbia, MO - everything save the loess baby found in creeks. The loess baby was found in loess and glacial till deposits north of Columbia, MO.
Gomphotheirum
Mounted specimen on display at the America Museum of Natural History, NYC
Reconstruction by Charles Knight.
When: Miocene to Pliocene (~12 - 3.5 million years ago)
Where: North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa
What: Gomphotheirum is a four tusked extinct proboscidean. Unlike modern elephants which only have enlarged upper incisors as their tusks, Gomphotheirum and its kin had enlarged upper and lower incisors. Neither set of tusks grew as large as living elephants, but the lower jaw was heavily modified and elongated to support the lower tusks. If you look at the photograph of the mounted specimen above, you can see that the actual bone of the mandible extends to almost the tip of the upper tusk. Based on the structure of the skull of Gomphotheirum it is thought the animal had a trunk, though again not one as log as the living species of elephants. Gomphotheirum is on the small side compared to the mammoth and mastodon in the photo with it, and also is a bit smaller than the living african elephant, but about the same size as the asian elephant - standing about 10 ft (3.2 meters) tall at the shoulder. These fourtuskers were proportioned very differently from the asian elephant, however. Their legs were much shorter in proportion to their body. The genus Gomphotheirum originated in North America, but spread throughout most of the world before going extinct in the Pliocene.
Gomphotheirum in the group Gomphotheriidae (shocking I know). Gomphotheres ranged almost world-wide for over ten million years, and it is possible the last one died less than 10,000 years ago. I say only possible as relationships of gomphotheres, and really proboscideans as a whole, are really not well understood. Gomphotheriidae may be a paraphyletic series of taxa (not a ‘real’ group), with some taxa more closely related to the living species than others. Basically if you are interested in paleontology the study of proboscideans is an area that desperately needs more people in it. You also get to look at other cool extinct forms like Deinotherium!
