Museum To Unveil 500 Million-year-old Specimen

[Guest Nicholas]

The Virginia Museum of Natural History will unveil a 500 million-year-old stromatolite specimen on Saturday during the third annual Dino Day festival in Martinsville, Va

Find the article: HERE!

[mommabetts]

Can't pull up anything, sorry.

[Guest Nicholas]

I'm not sure why only some members can see local news sources, It works for me fine on 2 different computers. Anyone else with this problem?

[Auspex]

I'm not sure why only some members can see local news sources, It works for me fine on 2 different computers. Anyone else with this problem?

For me, it will only load as far as the frame banner, then stop. Refreshing doesn't help.

[Guest Nicholas]

It always works 100% of the time for me but for those who cant see:

By Lisa Snedeker

Correspondent

Published: January 8, 2009

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — If you’ve ever wanted to see something that is 500 million years old, you won’t want to miss Saturday’s Dino Day festival at the Virginia Museum of Natural History. The third annual festival, which will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., is the first event in the museum’s yearlong 25th anniversary celebration.

The museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, was founded on Aug. 28, 1984, as a private, nonprofit institution and became an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1988. Saturday at 10:30 a.m., the museum’s newest exhibit — a 500 million-year-old stromatolite specimen — will be unveiled. The specimen’s discovery in Boxley Blue Ridge Quarry in Roanoke in May 2008 garnered national attention, according to museum spokesman Ryan Barber.

“This is a really big deal,” he said.

A stromatolite is a mound produced in shallow water by mats of algae that trap mud and sand particles. Another mat grows on the trapped sediment layer, and this traps another layer of sediment, growing gradually over time. Stromatolites can grow to heights of a meter or more. They are uncommon today, but their fossils are among the earliest evidence for living things. The stromatolite, which measures more than 6 feet in diameter, is one of the most complete in the world and will be permanently on exhibit at VMNH.

Festival-goers can also see life-sized skeleton casts of prehistoric creatures, watch scientists unlock the past and take part in a variety of games and activities, including becoming a scientist for a day. Many of last year’s crowd favorite activities return this year, including the “Dino Dig Pit” where visitors can use paleontology tools to uncover fossil casts, and a special dinosaur-themed play presented by local students. The play, which will be presented by the Carlisle School Players, is titled “Dr. Belinda Brilliant and Her Amazing Learn More Machine: Dinosaurs,” which was co-written by Mary Catherine Santoro, a librarian at VMNH.

“Over 2,000 visitors have taken part in our first two Dino Day festivals and have left very happy,” Carolyn Seay, special events manager at VMNH, said in a release. “Dinosaurs always pique children’s interest, and getting to see museum specimens that normally aren’t available to the public makes for a special visit to the museum.”

Other attractions and activities include the museum’s costume mascot “Cera” and her other dino friends, fossil identification, dinosaur-themed crafts for children and special dino films in the museum’s hooker Furniture Theater. VMNH staff and volunteers also will be on hand to explain the work being conducted in the Museum’s Elster Foundation Vertebrate Paleontology Lab. Specimens on display at the festival include an Allosaurus skeleton, a skeleton of a 14-million-year-old baleen whale; Eobalaenoptera, suspended from a towering 40-foot ceiling; an animatronic model of a Triceratops; a display of a Syntarsus dinosaur with its prey; a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull; and a recreated Phytosaurus. Dinosaur bones and other fossils collected at VMNH research sites around the world can also be seen. Admission is $9 for adults; $7 for senior citizens and college students; $5 for children and youth 3 to 18; members and children under 3 receive free admission.

[Auspex]

It always works 100% of the time for me but for those who cant see:

Thanks Nick!

This is the first time I've had a problem opening any of your links. I tried it again; it got a little farther, but the browser terminated. Maybe it's an MS Explorer thing?

[tracer]

it loaded fine for me, but i suspect the frame-within-a-frame loading of a webpage within another webpage might be triggering some people's red alert configurations. a possible fix when you want to link those kind of things is to go to the original story's website and link to the original story rather than feeding it through the other portal.

and when in doubt, switch to firefox for your browsing. just do it. dare ya.