By Annette Benson
School: Medstead Central School
This morning we were able to gloriously sleep in – until breakfast at 7am. We were treated to a hot breakfast in the Terrace. Somehow, the topic of interpretive dance was discussed. A certain gentleman has agreed to present the ‘Kimberlite Interpretive Dance’ to the entire group on Friday. From there, we packed up the bus with our bags and a picnic lunch and headed on the road. Interestingly, travelling by bus rather than by plane, is a lot less glamorous and much, much longer. Nevertheless, we arrived at our destination – Eastend T-Rex Discovery Center. This is a museum and research site which has been entirely funded by the community of Eastend! The provincial government rents research space at the Discovery Centre where it carries out very cool but detailed research on macro and microfossils.
School: Medstead Central School
This morning we were able to gloriously sleep in – until breakfast at 7am. We were treated to a hot breakfast in the Terrace. Somehow, the topic of interpretive dance was discussed. A certain gentleman has agreed to present the ‘Kimberlite Interpretive Dance’ to the entire group on Friday. From there, we packed up the bus with our bags and a picnic lunch and headed on the road. Interestingly, travelling by bus rather than by plane, is a lot less glamorous and much, much longer. Nevertheless, we arrived at our destination – Eastend T-Rex Discovery Center. This is a museum and research site which has been entirely funded by the community of Eastend! The provincial government rents research space at the Discovery Centre where it carries out very cool but detailed research on macro and microfossils.
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| Group in front of T-Rex Discovery Centre |
This Center is amazing. Not only does it house palaeontologists from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, it is home to Scotty the T-Rex. He is known as the most complete and some say the biggest T-Rex skeleton to be discovered in the world. We were split into elementary and senior groups to complete student activities which are available at the center. The senior group made cast replicas of Scotty’s tooth using resin and identified replicas vs specimens of fossils. Note: Skeletons which are displayed in the museum are replicas due to the fact that fossils become extremely heavy during the fossilization process. Thus, it would be impossible to set up a fossil skeleton. The elementary group learned about rocks and erosion. We used water bottles to demonstrate erosion on a plaster mold. Then we used a chisel to break apart the plaster and discover ‘fossils’ buried in the ‘rock’. Amazingly, if you give a bunch of teachers a hammer, a chisel, plaster and fossils, then add some water to the mix, they get really excited and act much like children.
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| Paleontologists in Training - Fossil Find Activity |
Once our activities were completed we received a tour of the museum and the fossils that represented the ecosystems of the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods, and the palaeontologists at the Fossil Research Station showed us the projects they were working on – from tiny, fragile microfossils, to huge, fragile fossils of prehistoric creatures.
The T-Rex Discovery Centre offers a lot of great programs that we can use in our classroom – a really cool one is the overnight Cretaceous campout. Imagine watching a movie in their theatre, watching the night sky at the local observatory and then bunking down with huge prehistoric beasts from the Cretaceous and Tertiary period! I can already hear the kids saying “best school trip ever.” From there, we jumped back on to the bus (no, it had not magically turned into a private jet!), and drove further south to find the K/T (Cretaceous /Tertiary) Boundary along the Frenchman Valley. The K/T marks the end of the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Tertiary period is marked by a prominent coal seam that is underlain by a layer that has elevated levels of the element iridium and that has been interpreted by some to be evidence of a meteorite impact event that was related to the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. We managed to find the line of coal but a lot of silt had eroded down the hill making it difficult to find the actual K/T Boundary. Either way, we spent some time standing on both “Crustaceous” (our term for Cretaceous) earth and Tertiary earth at the same time!! We collected a few rocks along the way and tried to identify them. This is a surprisingly difficult task but we were able to find some fantastic specimens to take back to our classrooms.
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| Learning about the ongoing research at the Fossil Research Centre - T-Rex Discovery Centre |
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Touring the Cretaceous Gallery - Mossosaur |
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| Straddling 65 M years of time at the K-T Boundary |
To end our day, we travelled back to Swift Current for supper and some welcome sleep to prepare for our Belle Plaine solution potash mine tour tomorrow!
