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