Thursday, July 9, 2009

Vacation 2009 Part 6 - Fossil Hunting

Monday afternoon, we headed up onto the mountain. Below is a fossilized dinosaur track! There were enough of the tracks that we could follow where they walked!
We also did some actual fossil hunting (on land where it was legal to take the fossils!). The kids found some "devil's toe nails" (sea-shells) and some teeny-tiny fossils called cloynoids (sp?) which are actually tiny coral. I wish you could've been there to watch Mango's eyes get big when she realized exactly where and when those fossils came from. I asked her how she thought sea-shell and coral fossils might end up on top of a mountain. She answered "water", and I asked her to imagine just how much water it would take to cover this big old mountain we were on, and asked her if she knew when that happened. Random helped her out by answering Noah's flood, and I told her that was right - that what she was holding in her hands were most-likely fossils made during the time of Noah's flood. It was a pretty amazing idea to me too!
(By the way, we are well aware that the picture at the top says to stay away from this dangerous cliff and our daughter is standing right there....Have no worry. It was not really dangerous and was taken as a "gift" for one of her cousins!)