We enjoyed today’s Archaeology and Paleontology lab and collections tour at the Heritage Center! The club got a behind-the-scenes look in the basement of the museum.

In the archaeology lab, they tried out various pottery decorating techniques on clay and held replicas of spear points, knives, and scrapers. In the Paleontology lab, the kids were able to see ongoing work being done on Dakota the Dinomummy. It was fascinating to be right there in the lab watching the volunteers use tiny jack hammers to remove rock around the hadrosaur!

Jeff the Paleontologist then took us to the archives, where we all got to touch a T-Rex tooth and the largest coprolite they’ve ever found. It was fun to see the kids try to guess what the coprolite (fossilized poop) was and laugh when they realized they were all touching 60 million-year-old poop!