By examining the teeth and bones of creatures that existed millions of years ago, kids and their parents at Ella Johnson Memorial Public Library in Hampshire could imagine what dinosaurs were like when they ruled the earth.
Forty area residents signed up for the program on Saturday afternoon, which was conducted by the father and son duo of Jack and David Howe of T-Rexplorers, a group that brought the program to the library, at 109 South State Street, in September 2014.
“We were happy to invite T-Rexplorers back,” said Dawn Cummins, the library’s youth services manager. “We like to offer programs that are fun, interesting and educational.”
T-Rexplorers describes itself as “a small company with a big dream to inspire children to have a renewed interest in science and nature, thus achieving a better balance with technology.” T-Rexplorers has conducted programs at other libraries, schools, park districts and birthday parties.
David Howe said his interest in dinosaurs started at age six when he found his first fossil. His daughter, Zoe, 12, fell in love with dinosaurs after participating in a program at Old Quarry Middle School in Lemont.
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Zoe, along with her father and grandfather, signed up in 2012 for a group dig with PaleoAdventures in South Dakota.
PaleoAdventures is an independent, commercial paleontology company dedicated to helping preserve the vertebrate fossils of the American West. Based out of the Black Hills of South Dakota, it was founded by Walter Stein, a professional vertebrate paleontologist and dinosaur hunter, and his wife, Heather.
“We have been out to Enigma Quarry and Tooth Draw Quarry in South Dakota four times,” Jack Howe said.
On Saturday, David Howe asked the children to sit on the floor while he talked in order to remind them that paleontologists sit for long periods of time while they search for dinosaur remains.
“Imagine digging in a dirt pile the size of a mountain and only finding a tooth,” he said. “But you are the first person to touch that tooth in 65 million years.”
He said the four things paleontologists have to watch out for are: sun, snakes, scorpions and spiders.
David said the five things that prove dinosaurs once existed are: tracks, eggs, bones, teeth and feces.
Attendees were able to look at and touch some of the dinosaur remains. A scratch in the backbone of a Triceratops showed where a Tyrannosaurus rex once bit him. The number of scars on a Triceratops frill indicate the number of battles he fought in his lifetime.
David said that when someone during a dig finds a bone, they yell, “Glue.”
“The second we take it out of the ground, it breaks into pieces,” he said. “You need to soak it in glue to keep it together.”
He said the paleontologist’s most important tool is the brush.
“The more you brush, the more you find. It requires a lot of patience. It can take two years to remove a bone from the ground.”
He said when the famous Tyrannosaurus rex known as Sue was found, they also found the bones of four other Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs nearby.
“This showed evidence of a dinosaur community,” David said. “You can now visit Sue at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.”
Some of the children cringed or giggled when they were given the chance to hold fossilized dinosaur dung. David explained that they can tell whether the feces came from a carnivorous or an herbivorous dinosaur by checking for fossilized meat and bone or plant fragments.
Eric Luhman of Hampshire said he would like to become a paleontologist in the future.
“I’m not asking all of you to become paleontologists,” David told his young audience. “But I do want you to think about what you want to be one day. And whatever you want to do, your next step is to go to the library and read all about it.”
Denise Moran is a freelance reporter.