Fossils for Kids

Educational Fossils for Kids

Fossils for kids is about helping teachers

As we look to our 16th year online in 2015, we hope to find more time to foster the education of kids, and inspire them regarding science and natural history. We have a few ideas, buy are not ready to share them, but we will say that perhaps the best way to help kids is to help the teachers. Also, as a matter of definition, we are here defining kid to encompass essentially any age -- certainly fossil collectors behave like kids in many ways as they pursue their passion. Keep an eye here for future developments.

National Fossils Day, October 15, 2014

National fossil day in 2014 was promoted by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The Virtual Fossil Museum (VFM), and faculty representatives from all non-religious Arkansas colleges and universities showed up for events held at the Little Rock Museum of Discovery. There were (well I really don't know the head count) I'm sure well over a thousand kids that cycled through that day. The images below tell part of the day's story. The VFM brought its pretty meager fossils collection, and prepared an onlinr PowerPoint slide show to explain each, ranging across geologic time from Archaean stomatolites, to the cast of an Ursus cave bear skull. Truth be told, the kids had minimal interest in the fossils I consider most interesting. But, wouldn't you know, most could just not resist touching the foot-long Paradoxides, Cambrian Moroccan trilobite; the prodigious finger prints left by them are of little matter, as it was bought on e-bay 20 years ago, and probably little of it is real. :)

Get ready, the onslaught is about to begin.
Virtual Fossil Museum setup.
This little girl, the daughter of a university paleantologist, was swarmed all day by young and older alike.
Even archeologists explaining primate/human evolution.	Many vertebrates here. See sabre tooth?
It was a very long day in Little Rock, but well worth it.