Last Sunday the FreeThought FreeKids group went on a visit to Denver museum of science and nature primarily to see the new dinosaur exhibition that has opened there.

We got lucky with the weather, not so much with the traffic as there were delays just north of the Springs which delayed a few of us. I think in total we had around 25-30 people show up in total.

Here are some of the highlights for me and my kids

1) Some fossils behind glass you could actually touch through a hole (I thought that was really cool)
2) A set of skulls from triceratops and related dinos shown together
3) Several docents who were on hand to explain some dinosaur skeleton pieces - they were great (the docents that is)
4) The obligatory TRex skeleton and another whose name I forget that was cast in metal. Doesn't matter how many times I see a TRex it's always real impressive

For the younger kids:
1) An opportunity to "discover" skeletons by "digging" for them
2) An opportunity to make a plaster cast of a dino tooth
(My youngest wasn't at all interested in the main exhibition and spent most of her time doing  the activities)

Along with the exhibition is an IMax movie that we went to, narrated by Michael Douglas. Here is what I found really amazing: One claim often made by creationists is that there is a lack of fossils in general and transitoinal fossils especially. They claim that if the world has been around for 'billions of years' then . . . where are all the bodies? Well, the film showed that if you go to the right part of the planet where the right conditions exist there are literally bodies on top of bodies on top of bodies - for example the Gobi desert and Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. I'd never really known where the majority of fossils exist - now I know! And there are plenty of them!

If you haven't gone . . . .go !! It's here until early January