The Marine Mammal Program Will Debut WAY Ahead of Schedule

[fossilsonwheels]

It is becoming to Fossils on Wheels tradition to do a program way ahead of schedule lol I just booked our first marine mammal themed program This is about 5 months before I thought we would be ready but we do not turn down opportunities to do our thing in a classroom. The program is a look at the Miocene featuring marine mammal and shark fossils. We have just enough fossil material to touch on the West and East Coasts of the United States during this time. In fact, we have just enough material to do the program at all but we did this with dinosaurs last year and it worked out just fine.

 

I am really quite excited to talk about marine mammals. This is something I wanted to do last spring but we figured Dinosaurs would be the program that got us attention. Now we can have a little fun and expand on what we can already do quite well. Carter and I can follow the same formula of scientific information enhanced with touch fossils. We have some cool material from STH including some nice touch fossils, a couple of decent Cetacean pieces from the East Coast and shark fossils. We may not have all the fossils that I would want to do this with but I think we have enough to give the kiddos a really great hands-on experience. We can explore some interesting Cetacean adaptations such as echolocation, intelligence, communication, and migration. We can discuss the different feeding styles of whales and why they super-sized themselves. We can balance these adaptations with shark adaptations and fun facts about evolution and theories regarding the extinction of Megalodon. 

 

This also gives a chance to really get into the fauna of Sharktooth Hill. I grew up a few hours from STH and it remains the only formation I have collected in personally. We use a number of sharks from STH in the shark program but this is different. We will focus on it while touching on the East Coast of the US.  I am pretty excited to get into detail about a really cool part of the natural history of California with our local kiddos.

 

It is going to be fun and I feel pretty confident that we can pull this one off. I have three weeks to work on the presentation plus the kids will get free fossils which helps. I will be nervous like I was when we debuted the dinos but that is not a bad thing. It drove me to make sure we did our absolute best in every presentation. I am excited and will update TFF on the how well this one is received since there are so many STH collectors on the here !!

[Darktooth]

Good luck with your program!

[fossilsonwheels]

5 minutes ago, Darktooth said:

Good luck with your program!

Thank you !! It will be fun and once we work out the kinks, I think it will be a really solid education program.

[sharkdoctor]

Good luck! Sounds like an amazing endeavor. If you find that you need more marine material from the east coast for display or give-away, I might be able to help a bit. 

[fossilsonwheels]

11 hours ago, sharkdoctor said:

Good luck! Sounds like an amazing endeavor. If you find that you need more marine material from the east coast for display or give-away, I might be able to help a bit. 

Thank you very much for that offer. We do not have much from the east coast really. I will send you a PM

[fossilsonwheels]

Just a quick update, we had our first program yesterday and the kids LOVED it. Most of the kids in this class had a program with us last spring as 3rd graders so the engagement was outstanding. They asked more questions than any other class, most of which were about whale evolution and the extinction of Megalodon. There was also a lot of direct interaction with the fossils which is great. With a little more practice, this should become a really strong adaptation program. Thanks to @JBMugu and @digit each student got a bone from Sharktooth Hill and micro shark & ray teeth from Cookiecutter Creek. We had a great time and the kids learned alot which is the goal.