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Fossils · STEM Archives - The Children's Hour

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Coming up on The Children's Hour, we're going to learn about fossils in a kids crew field
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trip to a secret fossil quarry in the mountains outside of Albuquerque. Then kids crew member
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Amadeus chats with New Mexico Natural History Museum educator Mike Sanchez to learn how fossils
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are created and to answer the question, will we become fossils too? We also find out how
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fossils can teach us about the ice age and climate change today from Dr. Emily Lindsey at the
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La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles. This episode comes with a learning guide and
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is mixed with great music. Learn about fossils with us today on The Children's Hour. The Children's
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Hour is an independent production of The Children's Hour Incorporated, a New Mexico based non-profit.
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We're distributed by Native Voice One, the Native American radio network. It's time for The Children's
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Hour. Kids Public Radio.
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Why did the paleontologist go to the doctor? I don't know. Why? He discovered a dino-sore.
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It's time for The Children's Hour Kids Public Radio.
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story Plants, fossils are in prints kept on rocks and sand
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didn't have fossils then we wouldn't really have a clue uh We wouldn't know about dinosaurs.
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We wouldn't know about dinosaurs
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so.
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Fossils tell a story about uh animals and plants Fossils are imprints kept on rocks and sand
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Blue.
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We wouldn't know about dinosaurs. We wouldn't know about dinosaurs. Dear
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You are a dear.
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That's Jessie Farrell & the Gumboot Kids from Sparkle and Shine right here on The Children's
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Hour with Dinosaurs. I'm Katie Stone and today on The Children's Hour, we are learning about
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fossils. Today's show comes out of some summer field trips where we learned field recording.
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And I took the kids to a super secret fossil. dig site in the mountains outside of Albuquerque,
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New Mexico. The dig site was located in a private quarry, but a section of it was being dug by
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paleontologists for 350 million year old fossils. We're going to hear more about that and from
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the kids on that field trip. We're also going to hear from a budding paleontologist right
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on our kids crew, Amadeus Menendez. He's a long time volunteer at the New Mexico Museum of
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Natural History and Science. And he interviewed Mike Sanchez, the education director of that
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museum. We're gonna learn about fossils directly from that education team. Plus we talked with
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some folks from La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California. These are tar pits that are really
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like oily asphalt that have captured creatures for 60,000 years, creating perfect fossils.
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We're going to learn a lot more about that. We're going to learn how fossils are developed,
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why they are developed, and where we can find them. This episode comes with a learning guide
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and activities, and you can find them at childrenshour.org. Look for fossils. And in fact, that's exactly
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what we're going to do today as we learn about fossils together.
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To be a fossil a million years from now And make you say holy cow. Though you probably
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won't say holy cow. A million years from now. To be discovered like all those adminites
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And maybe shed a little light. On a history you're trying to rewrite
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speaking, tell a story.
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Allow your gut with a sieve and a wire brush. The Holocene Epic awaits you in awe of this
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sedimentary rock. Love to know how the Earth has come along. And is the Sun still going
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strong? Do you live here or is this cosmic galaxy?
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Raggar, ancient insects trapped in amber I can help the world remember. Tell a story with
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my bones
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continents, the changes in the climate, the species that would fare.
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to be a fossil.
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Yes, I'm down
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you.
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That's Lunch Money from a release called Science Fair To Be a Fossil. Today on the show, the
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kids crew are in the mountains of New Mexico outside of Albuquerque.
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We're with Amanda from Badlands Scientific Expeditions, and we are at a super secret site right now
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where Amanda and her team are digging for fossils. Welcome to The Children's Hour, Amanda. Thank
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you. First, we want to ask a big question. What exactly do you do for your job? So
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I dig fossils as a job. So I go into private quarries and I dig around and find fossils,
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excavate them, prepare them, and then get them into mostly museums. And so that's what we
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do as a paleontologist, you want to find new things, exciting things, things you haven't
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seen before. Amanda, will you take us on a fossil hike? Can we see where you're actually digging?
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Yes, I will. Let's go.
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We're going deeper and deeper and deeper into the big hole. There are lot of rocks. We're
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up in the mountains. We're probably going to see a ton of fossils. We might even find some.
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We're in the middle of what looks like a bowl surrounded by walls of kind of what looks
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almost like it's been blasted. What kind of quarry is this? It's a clay quarry, but we
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are working the limestone. What is a quarry? So this quarry is where they dig out rocks
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and they use them to make things. What exactly are you looking for down here? So we are looking
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for fossil fish, plants, bugs, amphibians, that kind of stuff. I see that there are
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a lot of small flakes of rock everywhere. Is there a reason for that? The rocks break
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up with walking on them. Tractors, water comes in and breaks them up. And of course, we use
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our hammers. and break the rocks up into small pieces to try and find the fossils hidden in
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between the layers.
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We spent the better part of a morning inside the quarry. We have a lot more coming up for you
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about fossils right here on The Children's Hour. But first, this is Susie Tallman.
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If ride a dinosaur, so tickled would I be. If I could ride a dinosaur, would you come with
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me? If I rode Iguanodon, we'd run without a flaw. We'd chase his herds of friends and point
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his sharp thumb claw. Bump, bump, bump, dinosaurs go bump Do the Donald dance with me Bump,
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bump, bump, dinosaurs go bump Do the Donald dance with me If I could ride Tyrannosaurus,
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where would I be? I'd hold on tightly to his neck So he could not eat me to hold on to.
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As Dagosaurus walks, honks and hoots to all her friends, because that's the way she uh
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tucks. Bump, bump, bump. Dinosaurs go bump. Do the dinodance with me. bump, bump. Dinosaurs
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go bump. Do the dinodance with me. Iguanodon, Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Hawks Triceratops,
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Tyrannodon, Apatosaurus, Rocks If I could ride See the world from high She'd fly
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Bump, bump, bump, go bump Do the dino dance with me Bump, bump, bump, dinosaurs go bump
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Do the dino dance with me Bump, bump, bump, dinosaurs go bump Do the dino dance with me
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Bump, bump, bump, dinosaurs go bump Do the Donald dance with me It's so easy. We're learning
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about fossils today on The Children's Hour in a fossil field trip where we learned field
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recording with the kids crew over the summer. This episode comes with a learning guide. You
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can find it and activities at childrenshour.org. Just look for the episode called Fossils. That's
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what we're digging for inside of a quarry outside of Albuquerque. So I wanted to ask how old
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is the rock that we're working with here? The rock is late Pennsylvanian age, roughly 305
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million years old. Wow. My name is Tom Suazo. S-U-A-Z-O. I heard you talking about how
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the brick companies use the lighter rocks here. Can you elaborate on that more? Yeah, so
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the layers of rock that are on top of the one I'm standing on are good for making into bricks.
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So, they mine them out of here, they grind them up and they bake them into bricks. And the
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lower rocks that we happen to be standing on have a lot of fossils in it. So they leave
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us these rocks to look for fossils and they take the upper ones for making into bricks.
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That's very interesting. Do you think that I could help unearth the fossils? Absolutely.
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I was just grabbing paint scrapers so that everybody could help look for some fossils. Yay.
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Right now I am using a paint scraper to peel off a layer of rock. I'm seeing a lot, and
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when I say a lot, I mean a lot of shell imprints on rocks, which were most likely prehistoric
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clams and shellfish.
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I'm looking around here and there are so many shells. Yeah, there are so many shells. It's
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amazing that these things were buried millions of years ago and just recently were unearthed
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from the rock.
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I've just moved positions. Let's see what happens. See what I find. Oh, jackpot. lots of cool
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shells. Even though this is an environment where we have a variety of different kinds of animals,
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it seems like we're finding mostly shells. So why is that? Well, the shells were really
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successful in different conditions. So when the conditions changed here, they kept living.
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And you'll actually find beds that are void of shells. basically, shells did all right
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in most of the conditions that were here back in the late Pennsylvania. Cool.
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Just to pick and brush. Finding fossils is my aim. So I'm never in a rush. Cause the treasures
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that I seek. Are rare and ancient things Like the. Lossoraptor's jaw. Or Archaeopteryx's wings
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Now all the kilts are lying in oh I am a paleontologist
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oh.
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Herbivore, crushing plants with rounded teeth Or ferocious carnivore who moves so quickly
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on its feet It's like pieces of a puzzle that I love to try and solve It's so fun to think
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about how a species has evolved.
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Yes!
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Is it a T-Rex?
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you
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I am a paleontologist, that's who
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From Here Comes Science, a release for kids by They Might Be Giants. That is, I Am a Paleontologist.
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And we on The Children's Hour are being paleontologists today. We're learning about fossils in a field
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trip we took to a fossil dig site near Albuquerque. We have a lot more from our fossil dig site.
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We have to do some explaining like. Why are there shells in the middle of the mountains?
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Lots more to learn coming up on The Children's Hour. Stick with us. You're listening to The
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Children's Hour, Kids Public Radio. We'll be right back. The Children's Hour is a production
20:08
of The Children's Hour Incorporated. We're a New Mexico based nonprofit organization supported
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by listeners just like you. You can learn more about us at ChildrensHour.org. The New Mexico
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Department of Cultural Affairs supports The Children's Hour. Experience the magic of New
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Mexico's many cultural traditions at museums and historic sites statewide. More at nmculture.org
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slash traditions. You can keep up with The Children's Hour by signing up for our monthly
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20:44
The Children's Hour shorts have dropped. We made short segments from our shows for educators
20:50
to make the most out of our learning guides and activities. Season 1 of The Children's
20:54
Hour shorts is at childrenshour.org. Look for the shorts! One, one, two, three, four.
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You
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That's Jonathan Richman right here on The Children's Hour. We're learning about fossils today.
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And this episode comes with a learning guide. Just go to childrenshour.org and look for the
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episode called Fossils. This summer, the kids' crew and I went on a field trip to learn field
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recording skills, but also to learn about fossils. We went to a secret fossil dig site just outside
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of Albuquerque. We're in the middle of the desert right now in the hot heat, but we're finding
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a lot of fossils from animals that seem like they lived underwater or things that lived
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in rivers, but we're in the desert. So how is that possible? About 300 million years ago,
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New Mexico was a lot closer to the equator and the ocean level was a lot higher. So it
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was basically like a small archipelago of islands. And off of one of these islands flowed a big
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river that pushed a lot of stuff from the land out into the ocean. And so these rocks preserve
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not only animals that were living in the ocean, like fish and sharks, but also anything that
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came down the river, like cockroaches and plants and small amphibians. So it's actually a really
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cool and interesting mix of the marine and non-marine in one place. And they're preserved
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here because it used to be an ocean, basically. There we are, now starting to peel up. Oh,
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there's a lot on the bottom of this one. Tons of shells. They're all stacked up on each
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other. It's like a little dog pile. Or a clam pile. Why do we have such a collection of
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fossils all in one area? So this area was an estuarine environment. So that's where rivers
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are meeting the ocean. So you get this wonderful mix of terrestrial and marine fossils. So
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we have things like bugs and plants right alongside fish and sharks.
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Doing this is very calming. Very calming for you?
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This is a broken puzzle
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This fellow scientist who sang
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you
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You don't have a theory
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year of 1930
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In a blizzard
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It was much, too late.
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See
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Now everybody sing!
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That's The Amoeba People with Continental Drift and the continental drift explains how come
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all of the land masses on planet Earth really seem to be a puzzle that could be put together.
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Alfred Wegener saw that long, long ago and now it's understood that he was correct. And
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the continental drift is the drifting apart of Pangea. Creating the oceans and the
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continents as we know them today. You're listening to The Children's Hour and today we're learning
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about fossils. Find our learning guide at childrenshour.org. Look for this episode, Fossils. What Makes
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a Fossil a Fossil by Amadeus Menendez. Fossils come in many shapes and sizes from the tiniest
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mouse teeth to the biggest dinosaur legs. It might seem like fossils can just be any old
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bone or leaf that's from plants and animals that are old, but that's a very broad definition
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and one that doesn't really tell the whole story. So what exactly is a fossil? Does it have
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to be just from animals and plants or can it be from other things? Does it have to be a
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certain age to be considered a fossil? does it even have to be fossilized? Today, I'm
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going to be answering these questions and a couple more with Mike Sanchez of the New Mexico
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Museum of Natural History and Science to figure out definitively what makes a fossil a fossil.
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So the word fossil means or comes from the word fossilis, which means to be dug up.
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So originally, people thought of anything that you dug up as being fossil. So a definition
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of a fossil is any trace of life of a living organism that is more than 10,000 years old.
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So that's, we have to put an arbitrary date on it, that's what came up. So fossils though
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can be of anything from microorganisms, so you can literally have fossil amoeba, all the way
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up to fossil dinosaurs and dinosaur bones. So why are fossils important? What makes them
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matter and what makes them so significant in our modern day world of science? Fossils you
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can learn a lot about the Earth and its history. And by knowing about the past you can learn
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a lot about or predict what's going to happen in the future. Fossils sometimes are extremely
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important in ways that you wouldn't know. Just as an example, we depend on petroleum. Guess
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what petroleum is? Petroleum is the fossil remains of microorganisms that lived in the ocean.
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How do we find it? Sometimes there are these little tiny fossil teeth, they're called conodonts,
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that turn different colors depending on how close you are to proximity of a oil deposit.
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Fossils are also something that tells us about ourselves. We wouldn't know about our ancestry
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if it wasn't for fossils. fossils are important across the board and also
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they're fascinating to learn about the world of the way it was and use your imagination
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as to what that is all about. They're fascinating because it's how did animals live? You can
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learn for example that one animal was eating another. Or animals were eating plants and
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that's still happening today. It's sort of fascinating to think that hundreds of millions
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of years ago these very things were going on. How do we know that? By looking at their fossils.
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What makes a dinosaur bone different from, a bone that you just dug up? Well, there's a
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couple of things. First off, there's the age factor. If it was buried yesterday, it's certainly
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not going to be a fossil. The other thing is that frequently bones that have been mineralized,
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that means fossilized, they soak up minerals through the course of time. And the carbon
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is replaced with silica. So you wind up with not something that is light, fluffy, like a
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modern bone, but something that is actually mineralized heavy and very hard. Are fossils
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still being made and will we eventually become fossils ourselves? The answer to that is kind
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of more interesting than you think. Animals are dying every single day and animals are
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getting buried and animals are getting frozen and animals are, all kinds of things are happening
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to them. And eventually they're discovered. So for example, we have a 10,000 year old mummified
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elephant from the tundra somewhere. Guess what? If it had only been 5,000 years old, it wouldn't
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have been considered a fossil. It's just a dead animal out there. So yes. Things are constantly
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being exposed to the environments in which they will become fossils. Frozen, stuck in amber.
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As far as will we become fossils, the human race will leave behind its fossil evidence. The
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chances of a particular person actually becoming a fossil is really, really thin. If you think
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how many elephants have been around, if every elephant had become fossils, then we'd be
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literally in piles and piles. and piles trying to figure our way through dead elephants.
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But the fact is that it's a one in a million, one in a billion chance of becoming a fossil.
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So as a human race, we will leave behind fossil evidence, absolutely. But as far as
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an individual person becoming a fossil, not very likely. Thank you so much for being on
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The Children's Hour and thank you for answering all these questions. It's been my pleasure,
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thank you. That's Amadeus Menendez of our Kids Crew and Mike Sanchez of the New Mexico Museum
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of Natural History and Science. This is The Deedle Deedle Dees with a song about Lucy,
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one of the oldest human fossils ever found.
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Lucy When I first found you. We played the Beatles song. That's where we found
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a name for you I took you home with me Back to Cleveland It wasn't long before. You were
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famous. Down by the Osh River I laid my notes down I had a feeling I started searching round,
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it was hot and dry. Been loose and you caught my eye. First your arm bone, then a piece
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of your skull. Vertebrae, pelvis, ribs and jaw. That was day one.
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You were hominid baby oh. But not a chimp, at one site we found 40 % of your skeleton. They
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call you in Ethiopia. That means you're marvelous.
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When I first found you. We played the Beatles song. That's where we found a name for you
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I took you home with me. Back to Cleveland It wasn't long before. You were famous Upright
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That's right.
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What are you doing? Oh, I'm just peeling the layers away looking for the fossils. See here,
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there's little seashells, see them? Yeah, I do. This dark spot here is a piece
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of plant material from millions of years ago. My name is Dave. I prospect for fossils.
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Why do you look for fossils? Because I find it enjoyable. I do it for fun. How did you
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get into fossil hunting? I guess when I was a kid, my dad was like a rock hound, and we'd
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go out looking for different rocks and fossils. So currently I'm using my hammer and chipping
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away. Pretty big piece of grey rock. There's a lot of moisture under these rocks.
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Hi, what's your name? Randy Pence, P-E-N-C-E. Now, what do you have here? This is fish vomit.
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Oh. And it's 320 million year old fish vomit. How do you know that's fish vomit? I asked
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the expert over there. Do you find a lot of this, or is this more of a rarity? I've found
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a few out here. I mean, you can find all sorts of stuff. They find coprolites, which is fossilized
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poop. I found a cockroach out here. Which cockroaches have been around forever, probably will be
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forever. That's from this summer when we went on a field trip to a secret fossil quarry.
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You're listening to The Children's Hour. This is Mister Cooper. How do we know? How do we know
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dinosaurs live so long ago? This is a song about fossil. What are fossils you may ask?
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Fossils can be found in rocks or in the ground. Fossils are clues from the past. No one's
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ever seen a dinosaur. So how can we be sure they were real? Scientists found their bones
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in mud that turned to stone. Their history was revealed.
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Fossils can be fish, plants or shells Skeletons or footprints in the sand Or insects that
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were trapped in hard and sticky sap Fossils have helped us understand That's how we know,
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that's how we know Dinosaurs lived so long ago.
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Your listening to The Children's Hour, Kids Public Radio. We'll be right back. This episode of
40:13
The Children's Hour had special support from Sandia National Laboratories. Many thanks
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to Keshet Center for the Arts for hosting The Children's Hour. Support for The Children's
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Hour provided by New Mexico Arts, a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs,
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and by the National Endowment for the Arts. Support for The Children's Hour provided by
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the City of Albuquerque Cultural Services Department and the Urban Enhancement Trust Fund. The
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Children's Hour is making weekly learning guides for every episode thanks to the support of
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the Albuquerque Community Foundation. You can support this effort too. Go to childrenshour.org
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and click donate and find our learning guides under our podcast menu. You're listening to
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The Children's Hour and today we're searching for fossils. And when I think of a dig site,
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I tend to picture some remote place like a vast desert or the ancient ruins of an old city
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or the mountains like where we were with the kids. But one of the world's most unique places
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to find fossils is smack in the middle of Los Angeles, California, one of America's biggest
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cities. That's the La Brea Tar Pits. where scientists have found fossils up to 60,000
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years old, including lions and camels and giant sloths. Oh my! We talked with curator and
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paleontologist Dr. Emily Lindsey about this very special place and what it's like to study
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the Ice Age. I love that I get to follow my curiosity. I love that I get to work with
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a lot of different people. I do love that I get to get outside and get out in the world
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and travel and have adventures. The La Brea Tar Pits see experts from across the world
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all looking for clues to the Earth's past. She told us her team oversees active fossil
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digs every day. And so I'll be out there on days checking in with our excavation team
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and talking about what types of information we want to be getting out of the deposits that
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we're excavating right now and what new finds they might have made, whether it's the skull
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of a 40,000-year-old mountain lion or the fossil poop of a 50,000-year-old wood rat
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or a really cool complete beetle that they found that might be 25,000 years old. All
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of this happens just off the city's busy streets. There's museums around, there's cars and buses
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going by. And once you're in the park, it looks in some ways like a normal park, except there's
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a few buildings in it. There's a couple of different museums. And then also, throughout the park,
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these areas that are fenced off and on the other side of the fences, you can see these sticky
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black pools. of what we call asphalt or tar. In cities, we use asphalt to pave roads.
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Maybe you've seen construction workers smoothing and rolling the material to patch up a street.
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But in the La Brea tar pits, the asphalt pools are part of the natural environment. If you
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could imagine taking a bowl and filling it with like sand and pebbles and some dirt and
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some clay and then say dumping a bunch of molasses on top of it. That's kind of like what we're
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digging in. The asphalt seeps are actually the result of they come from underground oil
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reserves. So there's a bunch of oil underneath the city of Los Angeles, just like in many
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parts of the world. But the difference in Los Angeles is that we also have earthquakes.
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And so sometimes little cracks form in the ground and that underground oil smushes its way up
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to the surface. These tar pits are found across the world. But the only one in the middle
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of the city is the one here in Los Angeles, and we're also far and away the most well studied.
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And because the La Brea tar pits are so sticky, everything from leaves and bugs to massive
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animals have gotten stuck at the site, leaving all kinds of fossils behind. The La Brea
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tar pits is best known for our big extinct Ice Age mammal. So we have mammoths and mastodons,
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we have saber-toothed cats and dire wolves, we have giant bears, giant lions, horses, bison,
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dwarf pronghorn antelopes, we have camels, but then my favorite are the giant ground sloths,
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which are related to modern tree sloths, but they got to be the size of hippopotamuses.
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So this whole area used to be a ranch. There were cows grazing everywhere, and somebody
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on the ranch had found a bone and they showed it to a geologist who was visiting from Boston.
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And he looked at it and he was able to identify it as being a bone of a saber-toothed cat,
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which we knew was extinct. And so that's when this came to be recognized as a site that
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might be of interest to paleontologists. The site's biggest excavations happened at the
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start of the 20th century. That's a little over 100 years ago. And then in 1969, the Natural
45:47
History Museum decided to resume excavations here. Researchers even found a partial human
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skeleton at the site, proving that people had been frequenting the tar pits for thousands
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of years for its resources. These asphalt seeps that you know, have been trapping plants and
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animals for 60,000 years have also been very important to human communities because the
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asphalt has a really remarkable property, which is of course, oil and water don't mix and
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the asphalt's already quite sticky and then when it can be dried out, it hardens into
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basically a waterproofing agent. So it's been used by humans for thousands of years to make
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waterproof. pots and drinking vessels to waterproof boats. A hundred years ago, people were only
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collecting big fossils from the site. They were studied and made into museum exhibits.
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But since then, experts have found so much more. And these are the fossils of little
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insects and plants and lizards and snakes and birds, even fish and little freshwater
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snails and clams. It's these fossils that are really important for helping us understand
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what the ecosystem was like, what the climate was like. And the site's sticky tar pit actually
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plays a key role in scientists' ability to do that work. First, it traps everything in one
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place. So anytime something touches that asphalt, it gets stuck there. And so it stays there
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forever, kind of like flypaper. But the tar also improves the quality of the fossil.
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Earlier on our show, Mike Sanchez at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History told us that
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many old bone scientists study are, well, fossilized. Their original chemical composition slowly
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changed over time to a harder, mineralized material. As it turns out, tar is really
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good at preserving objects like bones. It's actually still the original bone. Which means
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that we can learn about the chemistry of the bone. We can get radiocarbon dates. We can look
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at chemical signatures in the bone that tell us something about what an animal was eating
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or what the environment it lived in might have been like or whether or not it migrated. You
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might be wondering, what is a radiocarbon date? Well, it's a major part of how scientists
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know the age of any fossil. All plants and animals contain radiocarbon. It's a chemical
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naturally created by the Earth's atmosphere up in the sky. But over time, it breaks down.
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So as any fossil gets older, it contains less and less radiocarbon. If scientists measure
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the amount still inside a fossil, they can learn how long ago that animal lived. And as Dr.
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Lindsey said, sometimes they can also measure other chemicals inside its bones. They leave
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signatures like a person signing an old letter. we get really small things and really big
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things all together in one site, which is pretty unusual. And so because of that, we're able
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to actually start reconstructing an entire ecosystem in the past, which is a very rare opportunity
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for a paleontologist. We know the Earth looks awfully different than it did 60,000 years
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ago. There are no more wild camels or saber-toothed tigers in America. and many parts of the world
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have experienced major shifts in their climates. Today we're seeing big changes too, and in
49:35
some ways Dr. Lindsey says looking into the Earth's past can even tell us about what we're
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going through now. I think the most important types of questions that are being asked at
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places like La Brea Tar Pits now are really about understanding what happens to ecosystems
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during times of major environmental upheaval like we see ourselves going through today.
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So we know that the time period that the Tar Pits cover is the last 60,000 years or so of
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Earth's history which included the last major episode of climate change. It included when humans
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first arrived. and a time that included a big extinction event where we lost some animals
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from the ecosystem. And so what we're trying to do now is use our information that we have
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from these natural events from the past to help inform how we might be able to protect
50:39
species and sort of best support ecosystem resilience and health. as we're going through
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periods of environmental change today. That's Dr. Emily Lindsey. She's the assistant curator
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and excavation site director at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California.
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Finding fossils, digging in the dirt Finding fossils, time to get to work Finding fossils,
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digging in the sand Dinosaur's digging without hands. Millions of years ago Dinosaurs ruled,
51:23
dinosaurs roamed. When they died, buried in the earth. Dinosaur bones turned into stone
51:33
Finding fossils, digging in the dirt Finding fossils, time to get to work Fossil digging
51:44
in the sand. Finding fossils digging with our hands. Take a little help. Taking a little chisel
51:55
to chip the fossil off. Taking a little brush, brush the sand away. Put the bones together
52:03
for the dinosaur display. Finding fossils, digging in the dirt. Finding fossils, time to get to
52:12
work Finding fossils, digging in the sand Finding fossils, digging without hands Dig deep in
52:24
the sand. Pull the bones out just with your hand. Can you dig deep in the dirt. Find all
52:34
the fossils, find them first Finding fossils, digging in the dirt Finding fossils, time
52:43
to get to work. Finding fossils, digging in the sand. Press Play Picture House right here
52:55
on The Children's Hour. We're going back to the kids one more time at the super secret
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fossil dig site in the mountains of New Mexico. We have a learning guide that comes with this
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show. can find it at ChildrensHour.org. Look for fossils. What's the most exciting thing
53:12
you found? Well, that would be the fossil spider that I found here back in 2014. It's
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the only fossil spider that's ever been found in New Mexico and it's actually named after
53:23
me. It's called Protolycosa suazoi. Whoa, what did you find? I think this is a fern
53:32
right here and it almost has like a black outline. it's kind of like a silhouette just on a flat
53:37
rock. Wow, a 350 million year old fern just sitting in your hand right now. Yeah, as a
53:47
question where can we find photos of all of this? Photos are going to be posted to ChildrensHour.org.
53:53
Look for this episode, Fossils. Oh yeah, that's a nice size piece. Here, let's flip it over.
54:02
Let's see what's underneath. Ooh, there's a few. There's a few more. In 2013, they found
54:12
a shark here. Wow. The guy that found it wanted to call it a Godzilla shark, but Godzilla's
54:19
a trademark name, so we couldn't do that. It took them a day or two to figure out that it
54:24
could be a shark, and sure enough, and it's actually a new species. It's at
54:32
the museum. It's not like the whole shark because it's, smashed. And they figured out the teeth
54:40
of the shark will come out of his mouth and roll down and become scales on his body. That's
54:45
very interesting. There are so many rocks here and so many shells and fossils. You think
54:55
of finding a shell, like, oh, that's cool, but there's just so many of them. It's amazing.
55:04
I've seen lots of interesting rocks here, but I haven't really seen many fossils besides
55:13
the shells. But from what I've learned here, I think this was a very good experience. And
55:19
this is Gareth signing out. You heard from Amanda Cantrell and Thomas Suazo. They're from
55:27
Badlands Scientific Expeditions in New Mexico and they are paleontologists. Find photos,
55:34
our learning guide activities and so much more at childrenshour.org. Look for this episode,
55:41
Fossils. This is Juice Music right here on the Children's Hour.
55:53
the ground there's lots of clues answers to the Puzzles and bones can tell us lots Pieces
56:03
of a puzzle help us join the dots. Oh, paleontologists digging up the dinosaurs uh. Oh, paleontologists
56:16
digging up the dinosaurs. Opening our eyes to a prehistoric world. That's never been seen
56:24
before
56:40
Oh,
56:47
paleontologists digging up the dinosaurs. Oh, paleontologists digging up the dinosaurs. Opening
56:59
our eyes to a prehistoric world that's never been seen before.
57:20
Digging up the dinosaurs. Oh, paleontologists. Digging up the dinosaurs. Opening our eyes
57:33
to a prehistoric world That's never been seen before. Opening our eyes to a prehistoric world
57:41
That's never been seen before Haley and Cholagists. It's what I wanna be.
57:59
The Children's Hour is produced by The Children's Hour Incorporated, a New Mexico non-profit. You can
58:05
find photos, playlists, learning guides, and activities for every episode at childrenshour.org.
58:11
This episode of The Children's Hour was written and produced by me, Katie Stone, with production
58:17
help from Christina Stella, Eli Henley, Sarah Gabrielli, McKenzie Graunke, Thaniel Lentz,
58:23
and Isaac Lacerda. Amber Shiel writes our learning guides. You can find this one at childrenshour.org.
58:30
Look for fossils. Find our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts or go to our patreon.com
58:37
slash The Children's Hour or ask your smart speaker to play The Children's Hour podcast.
58:43
Our theme music was written by C.K. Barlow. The Children's Hour is distributed by Native
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Voice One, the Native American radio network. Thanks listening to The Children's Hour, Kids