The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Over the weekend I visited The Children's Museum of Indianapolis which as some impressive technology for their exhibits. Since I was watching my 3 and 4 year old nephews, my study of the exhibits was cursory. It was crowded and a rainy weekend day. I was impressed with all the people after volunteering in the Louisville Science Center. The facility is very modern and spacious.

The dinosaurs appeared to all be casts and computer screens were plentiful. My nephews especially liked the build the dinosaur program. We created several dinosaurs that passed the plausibility test and they walked across the screen into a simulated paleo-environment.  There was an interactive dig for uncovering fossils but it was too crowded and my nephews too young to participate.

Pictures show the outside of the building with the large dinosaur models either breaking out of or into the museum.

Here is a special dinosaur (Dracorex hogwartsia) that I have written about before.  Our local geology club had a cast of it at the last mineral, fossil, gem, and rock show.

Blurred picture of a T. rex cast part of the main Dinosphere exhibit of the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago).  This exhibit includes the Mann Properties Gallery of Dinosaur Imagery (John Lanzendorf Collection, the Paleo Prep Lab, and a Dino Dig area).

I briefly saw the train exhibit, the large gift shop, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars exhibit.  They also had something to do with Barbie which is interesting since the Indiana State Museum was on to that theme as well.

When I get a chance, I will visit there again with more time and attention to study their museum.  Great place to take young children!

Lenticulina Foraminifera of Poland

Image of foraminifera Lenticulina muensteri found in Kelby, Poland.  It existed in the Oxfordian Stage (161-155 million years ago) in the Jurassic Period.  Magnified 100 times with microscope.  Thanks to Michael Hesemann for the specimen.

Learn more about foraminifera from this area at this web page.

French Eocene Clam & Foraminifera?

These Middle Eocene Epoch (Lutetian Stage of the Palaeogene Period, Cenozoic Era) fossils are from Fleury-la-Rivière, France.  Since they are relatively three dimensional some of the images are partially out of focus using a microscope set at 40x.

Howard from Calgary suggested this website called A Collection of Eocene and Oligocene Fossils compiled by Alan Morton to help with identification.  It looks like a nice site.  A quick look at the bivalve page would make think this might be a Glans oblonga or Cardita davidsoni.

I am not sure what this next fossil is. It sort of looks like a grain of rice.  Using Alan Morton's site it might be a foraminifera called Quinqueloculina

Here it is magnified to 100 times with small dots showing on one side.