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We had two really great Dinosaur programs this week. We have two more Dino programs and a shark program next week too so things are rolling along very nicely for us. I did notice this week that we are missing out on an opportunity to give a broader picture of the paleoecology of the dinosaur era. The kids yesterday wanted to see Pterosaur and marine reptile fossils. We had a chance to really explain the difference between those reptiles and dinosaurs because we have yet to acquire those fossils. I wanted to open this topic to TFF members because I respect the knowledge of fossils and the animals that left the fossils behind that our friends have. We need to round out our programs and I need to begin learning more about dinosaur age animals that were not dinosaurs. We do have croc teeth that will start going with us and I am putting together a display of dinosaur era shark teeth to keep in the dino program bin. Now that I have a better handle on how much material we can fit into an hour long program, I can tighten up the program and find a few minutes to cover non dinosaurs. This is where we need your help. I want to know what critters from the age of dinosaurs you think we should be touching on. What animals do I need to start looking into getting fossil representatives from and what critters do i need to study ? I thought it might be really fun to get the opinions of our friends and have the great minds here contribute to the material cover. This is open to all forum members so give us your thoughts and knowledge. Help us further our education goals by creating a more well rounded program !

Today we debuted the Jurassic sauropod bones we picked up and Camarasaurus was the dino of the day. The kids loved the fused ribs and each kid got to touch them. We also passed around the Trike frill as usual plus some smaller Camarasaurus bones. This was by far our most interactive program yet and the students really responded. We ended up covering fewer dinosaurs but it did not matter to the kids. They were so excited to get to touch real dino fossils. This was a very informative program for me. The more of these we do, the more I believe that we need to keep adding bones the kids can touch. The display fossils are great but it is really the hands-on experience that makes the biggest impact. We are developing a niche as the dudes that will let you touch dino bones lol The best part of the program is always the end when we pass out the free fossils. Today was Goblin shark and Lemon shark teeth with bivalves and Gastropods. 26 students got those fossils plus we left some with the teacher for future students. 3 students that volunteered to help other students get to touch fossils were given Camarasaurus bone fragments for the volunteer work. Another great day of fossil education and making kids smile !

We were asked to comeback to 2 classrooms we had done a shark presentation for and do dinos ! Very cool but the teachers threw me a curve. They want a program aimed at teaching kids note taking and writing short essay answers from the notes. This is quite different than just talking about adaptations or the geology of fossils. I happily said yes and now I have two weeks to plan an entirely different theme but this will help us going forward as it gives us another style of program to offer teachers. I am pretty stoked that the teachers though enough of our program to invite us back and have us help the students build some skills. Quite a compliment for a program just getting started I think

I am super excited to say we are adding a couple of fossils from Canada. Part of working on getting a 501c3 is making sure we operate within our own bi laws and working with any laws that govern whatever it is you do in your non profit. I saw a dealer with some Canadian fossils from the Horseshoe Canyon formation that came with a disposition from the Canadian government. I saw an opportunity to grab a few fossils that not only add something to our presentations but gave us legally obtained fossils from our neighbors to the north. The dealer was kind enough to work with us on holding a couple of items that were within our budget. There are some really interesting dinosaurs in Horseshoe Canyon and while we did not add anything rare or spectacular, I am quite happy with what we did pick up. We got our Ankylosaurus scute. We had been looking to pick one up and we were not finding anything affordable. Not only is the one we picked up from Horseshoe Canyon, it was quite affordable for us. I am not yet sure which Anky we will talk about in our program but either way this was a great addition. I think it compliments our "Zuul" tooth very nicely and the kids will really like seeing some of that Anky armor. We also picked up a toe bone from a Ceratopsian. The kids really liked learning about animals other than Triceratops so I jumped at the chance to add one from this formation. Like the Anky scute, the genus and species is indet but I am pretty sure we will talk about Pachyrhinosaurus when we show this fossil. It is a cool critter with a cool name. We talk a lot about Ceratopsians so this was an easy choice. We also added something really cool. We got a Dromaeosaurid tooth. When I purchased it, the seller had said it was from Judith River and labeled it as Dromaeosaurus albertensis. It is not from Judith River. It was actually collected from Red Deer River Badlands near Drumheller in Alberta. I am pretty sure it is actually from Horseshoe Canyon which means it is not Dromaeosaurus. The only described raptor from that formation is Atrociraptor. I will get around to posting better pictures and seeking an ID from TFF members eventually but for now am quite good with going with Atrociraptor for education programs. It was a pretty fearsome looking creature and also pretty different from the other raptors we present. Sure, I whiffed on Dromaeosaurus again but I am not complaining. It is another really nice tooth and we add another dinosaur to educate the kiddos about. This also gives us a theropod from the formation which rounds out the presentation nicely. I am pretty sure the tooth is also legal as it was collected in the 60's and has been in the US since the 70's. Anyway, here are the fossils minus the toe bone which I do not have a picture of yet.

Read that title and imagine a cheesy 80's TV commercial from your local furniture store lol We booked 4 more programs which means at least 130 more free fossil start kits will end up in the hands of local kids We received a fantastic donation from @Flx of some dinosaur bones, including some chunkasaurus bones. Carter and I decided to match that so we donated some chunkasaurus bones from our Jurassic purchase. We can now mix in dinosaur bones for the kids which is really pretty cool. It is an awesome feeling to see the kids react to getting fossils. It makes all the hard work well worth it. My best guess right now is that by the end of the school year, we will have provided education for over 1,000 kids and given away 500 free fossil kits. We do not have the supplies to give away fossils at the large school wide presentations but that gives us a goal to work towards. Another huge thank you to all who have donated fossils and helped us with knowledge and support. We could not do this without all of you !

Fossils on Wheels can officially say we are an elementary assembly program We will be doing two presentations for all of the students at Nord Country Day School. it is a small charter in the middle of farm country here. I personally love the single class presentations because they allow you to interact with the students in a more in-depth manner. The assembly style programs are our best way to travel to schools outside of city though. We can educate an entire school versus 30-35 students at a time. This is pilot program but it is very important to our future to develop a large scale traveling fossil program. Things are moving very quickly for us and we are starting to reach large numbers of students. A big leap forward for us and a chance to bring real fossils to an entire school. This will also be the debut for our Diplodocus fossil which is our largest piece. I am really excited to bring Dippy to a presentation.

Yesterday we knocked out our first Dinosaur Rock education program, tomorrow we do our first 3 Sharks Through Time education program. Unlike Monday when I was pretty nervous about our first program ever, I am relaxed and ready to talk about shark adaptations over 400 million years. We have nice fossil displays, the science is strong, and FREE shark tooth laden fossil starter kits. A HUGE thank you goes out to all who donated. Those donations are getting into the hands of kids We will hand out 100 fossil kits tomorrow and by the end of our first official week of operation, close to 150 fossil starter kits will be in the hands of local elementary students. That is not a bad first week at all.

We just wrapped up our first official fossil education program and it was AWESOME !! I let my son miss his last two classes of the day so we could do our first program together. We talked about how fossils are formed. We showed the kids some awesome fish fossils, our 5 inch Meg and some big whale fossils. Most of the program was about dinosaurs and we covered quite a bit of ground. The kids got to touch and feel Trike frill pieces. They saw T-Rex teeth and raptor teeth. We showed them fossils from a Titanosaur and Spinosaurs. We introduced them to Ornithiomimid dinosaurs and they learned about an Anky named Zuul. We wrapped our hour long program by giving 35 2nd grade students free fossil starter kits which was the highlight of the day. To all who have donated fossils, passed on knowledge and encouraged us....THANK YOU. All of the donations and support are putting fossils into the hands of kids and spreading natural history education. My favorite part was having Carter there with me. This is a fantastic start for us and it appears the future is very bright for Fossils on Wheels. All of the hard work we have put in is absolutely worth it and the faces of the kids at the end of the hour reflected that.

We have officially booked our first dinosaur education program A local teacher actually used The Fossil Forum to find us and ask us if we did dinosaur programs. We are dinosaur educators. The program is actually two days before our first official Fossils on Wheels shark program. I would never have thought our first program would be dinosaurs because we were not planning on even offering dinosaurs until the fall of this year. We are 9 months ahead of schedule but the demand is there so off we go in the wild world of dinosaurs. I am excited and a little nervous as I have less than two weeks to get myself ready. Thanks to donations from TFF members we have fossils to give these kiddos and we are going to have a lot of fun with this presentation. We get to talk about how fossils form and introduce the kids to the some awesome dinosaurs. I hope this is the first of many to come !! Thank you to The Fossil Forum and its members who have been so supportive and welcoming to us. Without your help, we would not be doing this.

Today is my last day off before I go back to work and I was supposed to spend the day making fossil starter kits. I have a cold though and I do not want the kids to think that 12 million year old shark teeth gave them a cold lol I am pretty bored so I thought I would post about our Judith River dinosaur fossils and how we are going to get discuss this formation. I am really surprised how much I am enjoying learning about these dinosaurs and this will be a formation that we spend a good bit of time on. It must have had some very productive ecosystems and there is a great diversity here to discuss. The kids will also get to see some familiar dinosaur families while learning about species that are new to them. I think during adaptation related presentations, this formation lets us get into ecological niches and discuss how two Tyrannosaurids existed as did at least two species of Dromaeosaurids and a Troodonitd plus other predators including non dinos. That is a lot of hungry mouths so niche selection and adaptations become very important. THere is also a great diversity of herbivores in this formation. I love the Ceratopsians from this formation and the diversity gives my son a lot of artistic options. We currently have one tooth but by the time we present we will have a couple more I think. This allows us to present a few species and say the teeth are not diagnostic so the teeth could have belonged to one or more really cool looking horned dinosaurs. This also gives the kids knowledge that there other Ceratopsians besides Triceratops. This will also be the point where we introduce Dromaeosaurids. Raptors are just iconic and this formation gives us the chance to really hit on adaptations. We have a Saurornitholestes tooth and will soon have a Dormaeosaurid caudal vertebra. While not assigned specifically to Dromaeosaurus, the vert will presented that way so we can talk about the differences between the two raptors. Of particular interest is the larger skull, more robust teeth, and specific wear patterns on the teeth of Dromaeosaurus. We will also have a small tooth tip from a Tyrannosaur indet. The kids will love learning about other Tyrannosaurids and I will leave it to the kids to imagine which one it belonged to. The real owner of the tooth is not important. That two existed in this formation is what is important. They must have occupied different niches plus a lot of kids may think T-Rex was the only member of that family. The last fossil I know we will have from Judith River is one of my favorites. It is an Ankylosaurus tooth and thanks to some help from TFF members, I spotted this among a few Nodosaur teeth. In our inventory, this is Ankylosaurus indet. However, in every single dinosaur presentation we do this will be Zuul and it will be a rock star. We want the kids to understand that there are many new discoveries being made and there will be a lot of new dinosaur discoveries made by THEIR generation. Everything about Zuul will be cool to kids. It is the one of the most incredible fossils ever found, armored dinosaurs are just cool, and it even has a pop culture name that a lot of kids will recognize from Ghostbusters lol Only 5 fossils but we can do A LOT of quality education with these fossils. I also have a very clear idea of the next items to find from Judith River. #1 on that list is a Dromaeosaurus tooth. A tooth gives us the perfect way of illustrating the difference between the raptors. We have two more purchases to complete before I buy again so I will save up and in the spring I start searching for that tooth. I also would love to add a hadrosaur bone from this formation and eventually I will track down a frill piece. Anyway, here a couple of the fossils... Pic 1- our Saurornitholestes tooth. Not a great picture but a really nice tooth. Pic 2- the Dormaeosaurid indet vert. Not here yet but will be right around my B-day. Pic 3- the Anky tooth. It is just a cool tooth and Zuul is a great dinosaur to teach kids about so Zuul is what this tooth is for Fossils on Wheels. Our only fossil from an armored dinosaur.