The Fossil Hunters© Amy B. Jeanroy
Jul 5, 2000
This summer marks the first official recordkeeping for Nathanial's homeschooling saga. We are doing a unit on fossil right now and a friend recommended a particular stream that was said to be full of fossil rocks. Here is a little article of our trip and what we did with the fossils we found..
The stream was 8 feet below the level of the lawn. It was full of rocks, spiders and dragonflies- a boy's heaven.
We climbed down using a rope and Gabe hung on while I explained how the rope was strong enough for both of us and *wasn't this fun?"
Once we got to the streambed, each footstep scattered huge spiders and other unmentionables. I remained staunch and talked about the way each rock was rounded by the rushing water, each rock was home to some sort of creature and hopefully, we should find some fossils here if we looked hard enough.
Like anything, once we found one the fossils seemed to jump out at us! The main problem was finding one that had enough of a selection of fossils to study on it while remaining light enough for mom to scale the wall-carrying the baby and said rock.
We found a fabulous speciman and then the experimenting and speculation began.
We pressed silly putty into the fossil imprint to see what the animal looked like originally. The main imprint was of a shell. It was a perfect shape that contained all the ridges and scallops of the original animal.
Then Nathanial thought of how the animal died there and what life was like back when it was alive. I must say, even the spiders were worth the trip to see history come alive for the boys.
The next time you get a chance to go outside, try looking in a streambed for fossils embedded in the rocks.
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