Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Spring arrives this month and although March is usually our snowiest month we are looking forward to longer days with daylight savings time arriving on March 12th. The Dinosaur Resource Center staff is busy getting ready for our spring break visitors and all of our school field trip students.

The Triebold Paleontology staff recently returned from our annual trip to Tucson, Arizona, for the world’s largest gem, mineral and fossil show.

Janelle Livingston, the gift store manager, and I scoured 100’s of booths in locations city wide in Tucson to purchase new merchandise for the Prehistoric Paradise gift store. At this event, we meet with vendors from around the globe presenting everything from rare gems, minerals and jewelry to raw ore and geodes. This is the place where we purchase many of our original fossil fish, teeth, turquoise, onyx and amber for the Prehistoric Paradise gift store. Most of our Tucson items have now made their way into the gift store. More merchandise will be arriving throughout the next 2 months so come by and have fun browsing the store.

Our annual Free Scout Day event will be held all day Saturday, March 11th. All scouts and their leaders, IN UNIFORM, will be admitted FREE. All of the presenters listed below will be here from 10:00am-4:00pm.

Flash and Thelma Memorial Hedgehog Rescue will be here with their Hedgehogs. You can learn about these adorable creatures which are the oldest living live bearing mammals. They were here with the dinosaurs and are still thriving.

The Air Force Academy “Physics is Phun” with shows at 11:30am and 2:00pm. Let’s have some fun with electricity, magnetism, angular momentum and temperature/air pressure. There will be interactive activities and a question/answer period in between shows.

Artist John Patterson will give lessons on how to draw prehistoric and modern animals, astronomy art and landscapes. Some of his collection of fossils and minerals will also be on display.

The Civil Air Patrol Cadets will be giving Boy Scouts pointers on how to earn their merit badges in Aviation and Space Exploration. Build and launch rockets, learn about Robert Goddard who was an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. Or, you can fly in one of their Flight Simulators.

COSROCs help you learn about rockets with experts in the field. Learn how model rocketry can propel you onto a path towards a career in Science, Engineering or Aerospace. Model rockets will be on display, as well as multimedia presentations.

The Friends of Dinosaur Ridge will have an activity table and come meet Molly their robotic triceratops.

Come on up and enjoy FREE Scouts day at the Dinosaur Resource Center! We will have tours going all day and this has historically been a very busy day for the museum so come early and stay all day.

FROM THE EDUCATION DESK

March! Does that mean that summer is almost here? I guess I am getting ahead of myself...actually we have had some very nice weather for this time of year and are so lucky to live where we do. We hope that your “almost” springtime is going well and that you will spend some time with us for our March events.

FYI:
Dinosaurs mating behavior is similar to modern birds according to new research by Martin Lockley, professor of geology at the University of Colorado Denver. Lockley, a paleontologist, led an international team that discovered large ‘scrapes’ in the prehistoric Dakota sandstone of western Colorado. These ancient scrapes are similar to a behavior known as ‘nest scrape display’ among modern birds, where males show off their ability to provide by excavating pseudo nests for potential mates. “These are the first sites with evidence of dinosaur mating display rituals ever discovered and the first physical evidence of courtship behavior.” Lockley goes on to say “These huge scrape displays fill in a missing gap in our understanding of dinosaur behavior.” This study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Lockley, a world renowned expert on dinosaur footprints, found evidence of more than 50 dinosaur scrapes, some as large as bathtubs. Similar behaviors are common in mammals and birds. The team were unable to remove the scrape marks without damaging them so they created 3-D images using a technique of layering photographs called photogrammetry. They also made rubber molds and fiberglass copies of the scrapes that are being stored at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Geri Lebold
Education Director

Spend some time shopping at Prehistoric Paradise, the largest dinosaur store in the region for hundreds of unique gifts including real fossils, jewelry, games, books, stuffed dinosaurs, t-shirts and much more! A family membership makes a great gift that can be enjoyed for the entire year. If you have someone who’s difficult to buy for, a gift card is the perfect solution. Save yourself time and money by letting our staff gift wrap your purchases free of charge.

T-shirts Buy one get one 1/2 off

Shirt of lesser value will be half off.  Limited to one coupon per customer. Cannot be combined with other discounts or coupons.

buy1get1

Dinosaur Resource Center