Dino-sized Outreach

October 25, 2016

Jackson School Assistant Professor Rowan Martindale shares how her lab participated in the Hot Science, Cool Talks community science fair. Check out more posts from Rowan on her blog, Finding Fossils.

Last week the Martindale lab did something new: we did outreach with dinosaur shoes.

The goal was to have children make a “fossil dinosaur trackway” that they could use to estimate their dinosaur’s size (and thus what dinosaur they were) as well as their speed. This was largely the brain child of the awesome Dr. William Foster,who has done a similar outreach project with the Natural History Museum of London.

First, we cut out some dinosaur feet, covered them with cheap carpet and screwed them onto some crocks and sandals.

We soaked the bottom of these shoes in some (washable) paint and then  had the kids put them on and walk along a strip of paper.

… and looked up what dinosaur they were and how fast they were walking.

We wrote everything down on these tracks and then the kids got to take their posters home as a souvenir!

Everybody wanted to be a dinosaur!

Fabulous job team, thanks everyone!