The day seemed bad with a full flight in Denver with everyone squishing their too large luggage into the small space of plane. On the humorous side, one lady brought a small pillow hanging from the back strap of her purse. Her pillow was accidentally hitting every person she passed in the aisle. At one point she had to stop in the aisle, but she was antsy and moved back and forth trying to see the obstruction ahead. With every movement she hit the same person over and over. All we could do was laugh!
But
the cool part was that I met a paleobotanist who had spent a month in Worland
Wyoming collecting fossils. Think the
science of Dr. Ellie Sattler from Jurassic park but with a deeper voice since
it was a guy! Instead of studying ancient
animals or dinosaurs in particular, the gentleman studied plants. He even worked for the Smithsonian and has an
office in the Natural History Museum.
We
had a great talk about ferns, flowering plants, petrified wood, global warming,
searching for fossils, camp conditions, writing papers, and the joy of hundreds
of 8th grade groups visiting the Smithsonian every spring. Did you
know that scientists can determine how much CO2 was in the atmosphere long ago
by counting the number of pores in a gingko leaf? I
found out that, unfortunately, it’s not true that everything comes to life like
in the “Night at the Museum” movies; however they did a lot of the filming in
several of the Smithsonian museums.
Turned
a blah flight day into something quite interesting!
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