Mysterious rocks, fossil bones, and other curious items streamed into the Museum last month, as thousands brought their finds to the Museum's annual Identification Day on Saturday, May 11. Visitors lined up to see specimens from the Museum's collections and to have their finds examined by experts from various scientific departments.
Here, posing with the new sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt (in the recently re-opened Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, on the Museum's first floor) are a few smiling visitors and their successfully identified specimens.
Michelle, pictured below, brought in what turned out to be rocks from the Jurassic period (about 201 to 145 million years ago), which included fossil invertebrates including an ammonite, belemnite, gastropod, and brachiopods.
Allana found a piece of yellow brick, beach-worn, in Trinidad, West Indies. But the brick was originally made in the Netherlands in the 1600s or 1700s, and brought to the Caribbean as ballast in a colonial ship.
And Parker, at left in the image, brought in the pelvis of a wild turkey.
Save the date and collect mysterious bones and teeth, rocks and feathers, for next year’s Identification Day, which is Saturday, May 10, 2014.