I Am A Paleontologist.

We are in Albuquerque New Mexico.  As usual on a day that we could sleep in, everyone was awake by 6:30am.  I was surprised considering the time zone change and the late night for the girls. Oh well.

Our morning was started off with Andy playing music with his uncle Tomas. Check out the band: (http://www.soncomoson.com/)

We didn't have much planned for the day except going to the Albuquerque Natural History and Science Museum. (http://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/)  Our family has a special connection with the museum as one of their Paleontologist is Andy's Uncle (http://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/gsmorgan.html).  We got a behind the scenes tour into the world of dinosaurs and other prehistorical animals. The whole time one of our favorite They Might Be Giants songs was in our heads:

It was an amazing and truly fascinating couple of hours. We got to meet volunteers painstakingly removing rocks from around bones, we viewed hundreds of cataloged fossil bones in various stages of research.  Andy even got to see the Glyptodon shell and Mammoth Tusks he helped to dig up about 10 years ago.

We then took our new found knowledge and walked through the museum with Gary and the family.  The museum is wonderful. We only explored a small portion of the museum.

We had lunch out and then promptly everyone took a much needed nap.  Tonight we will explore one of the towns lovely recreational pools to get in our swim and just spend time catching up.

We have special guest joining our adventure tomorrow, will post later!

Enjoy the pictures:

Specimens

Butterflies

Fossil Room

Showing us a skull reproduction

A mammoth femur

A camel and a buffalo, from the last ice age. These were found in a gypsum quarry, in a several million year old layer. Wait you ask - how could these bones be from the last ice age, which was only 10,000 years ago? There was a crevasse-like crack which the animals fell into, and were incorporated into the earlier layer.

Large Tortoise Shell

A mammoth tooth

A fish Fossil

Tiny Teeth

Fossil Footprints