Successful Fossil Hunt in Liverpool City Centre (Finding Ammonites and Belemnites)

We have just about recovered from yet another busy weekend for team members at Everything Dinosaur as last Saturday and Sunday we helped out at the BA Festival of Science event at the World Museum, Liverpool.

As part of a week long series of activities; this particular event was entitled “Science Explosion” and it enabled young people to get to grips with some real scientific puzzles and conundrums.  Everything from the “Big Bang” to robots were on display and children (plus their mums and dads), were able to meet some of the scientists and to learn more about these fascinating subjects.  Dinosaurs and fossils are always popular with young people and Everything Dinosaur did their bit by building a series of wooden trays, that once lined with plastic and filled with a mixture of stones and fossils, became an artificial beach on which we could take young children on a real fossil hunt.

A Fossil Hunt with Everything Dinosaur

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Everything Dinosaur attempted to create a typical fossil finding trip to part of the Jurassic coast of Dorset (Toarcian faunal stage), with fossils dating back some 180 million years.

Ammonites and Belemnites

In amongst the pebbles and stones we kept hiding a constant supply of belemnite guards, crinoids, brachiopods (mainly Rhynchonella), small vertebrate bones and other fossils.  Ammonite fossils were especially popular and we made sure we kept a supply of various ammonite fossils going into the beds as well.

To see models of ammonites and belemnites and other prehistoric creatures: Prehistoric Animal Models.

Budding young palaeontologists were also supplied with drawing materials and fact sheets so that they could understand more about the fossils they had just found.

Still hard at It!

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

All our voices had just about given up by the end of Sunday afternoon, we had been bombarded with eager young palaeontologists keen to learn more about fossils and to see the dinosaur fossil casts we had on display.  It is very hard work putting on this type of event but a lot of fun at the same time, perhaps in some small way we have helped to inspire the next generation of palaeontologists.

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