Today was the first National Fossil Day. A partnership between the National Park Service and over 130 other institutions and groups across the United States to spread awareness about fossil resources and their study and protection.
I spent the day guiding visitors at Petrified Forest National Park through our fossil preparation lab and conducted a tour out to a well known fossil locality known as the Dying Grounds.
You can read more about this at the following link. Check out the Official National Fossil Day song and video. Some of the people in the video look somewhat familiar.....
http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/nationalfossilday/index.cfm
This needs to be better advertised. I am a paleontologist and follow many science blogs and didn't hear about this until today!
ReplyDeleteWe invited visitors to help us clean slabs of Ordovician limestone for an upcoming exhibit, and gave guided tours of the collections areas.
ReplyDeleteThere was an official website and announcements were sent out a couple of times on the vrtpaleo e-mail list server. The conflict with SVP didn't help, but does anyone have any promotional ideas for next year (besides announcing it earlier on this blog)?
ReplyDeleteGreat song!
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I participated in the guided tour to the Dying Grounds and found it a wonderful experience that made our visit to Petrified Forest National Park so much more interesting. It is a great initiative to emphasize the park as a location of interesting paleontology finds and certainly is an added value on top of the impressive amounts of petrified wood that can be admired at the park.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a blast! I wish I had Santa-like powers to attend every event. For my part, I attended a great lecture called "Crinoids, Climate, and Carnivores" by Indiana University's P. David Polly.
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