I’m Dr. Cary Woodruff, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Frost Science. Take a step into my office with this monthly blog series, and let’s dig deeper.
You’re visiting a museum, like Frost Science, and you see an exhibition with dinosaur fossils, such as The Dig. You know that those fossils before you are tens, maybe even hundreds, of millions of years old. And you might see museum staff cleaning (called preparing) and studying those fossils. But how did that museum get those fossils in the first place? The simplest and time-honored way is for a crew from the museum to go out to find and excavate those fossils. As a scientist, that’s the part of the job that I absolutely love the most to share with you all!
You might have already known that a museum crew travels to the far-off corners of the map to dig up dinosaurs. And thanks to films like Jurassic Park, maybe you’ve gotten the idea that you’d really like to join a paleontological expedition one day. But you’re not a paleontologist. And you don’t work at a museum. Hogwash, I say! Science isn’t exclusive, and science isn’t only for scientists! Just last month, four enthusiastic participants got to join Frost Science’s paleontological crew on our dinosaur dig in northcentral Montana. These eager and intrepid folks spent a whole week alongside our crew excavating our ankylosaur fossil.
From students, musicians, to science educators and everything in between, these participants all had an interest in Earth’s past and wanted hands-on scientific experience. For the week, they worked alongside the crew to learn everything from how we identify fossils in the field, the ins and outs of proper digging techniques, jacketing (how we safely wrap up and transport the fossils), geology, and everything else you need to scientifically collect fossils. And for me, that’s the best part of the job! I want you to come to Frost Science to learn and see all of the amazing science we’re doing. But all of that incredible work doesn’t stop where the walls end.
At museums such as Frost Science, we don’t want you to just see and learn about science, we also want you to get your hands dirty! Not only can you volunteer in our fossil preparation lab to clean fossils, but now you can even go with us out on digs to find and collect those fossils that everyone will see in the prep lab. It’s cheesy, but I’ve always thought of it as farm-to-table science. If you can interact with, and experience something along every step of the way, you’ll learn and appreciate it so much more. And that’s what we want at Frost Science. We want you doing, learning, and saving science right alongside us.
