Dr Paul Serino’s Lab

July 30, 2009

OMG!!! I can’t believe I forgot this cool experience. We were invited to see Paul’s lab! Here we were able to see what happens to the fossilized bones when they come back to the lab. Questions such as, “how do they get the bone out of the jacket (plaster cast)” were answered. Also how do we know what the animal really looked like?

What clicked for me in this “field trip” was the marriage of two careers: the paleontologist and the artist. For the student who loves art and creating but is reluctant in science, the two careers can merge into one. As a class experience, students can make fossil casts, then paint them how they would have looked when they were alive!