Harvard Museum of Natural History Hosts National Fossil Day

The Harvard Museum of Natural History welcomed visitors on Sunday for its third annual National Fossil Day event since the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing children and adults to learn about paleontology by interacting with artifacts from the museum's collections.

The event consisted of three main components: Meet a Paleontologist, Lightning Talks, and Fossil Story Time. Throughout the day attendees were able to learn from paleontology experts who gave talks. Exhibits were lined with tables of games and activities where visitors could touch 3-D printed bone replicas and ask questions to paleontologists.

Arielle R.A. Moon, a senior museum educator and the organizer of Fossil Day, said the outreach opportunity “is our chance to work with the different paleontology labs and to bring paleontologists here to the museum so they can talk about cool fossils and their research with visitors.”

The event, which occurred during a rainy October day, was bustling with activity as attendees marveled at the dinosaur fossils.

Sravya Kattula, a biotech pathologist who has been volunteering as a gallery facilitator with the museum, said that the event this year was “really popular.”

“Even when it’s just a normal day, you do get a lot of visitors,” Kattula said. “But today, particularly, I do feel like it’s double or triple.”

Kattula, who was volunteering at Fossil Day for the first time this year, said she fell in love with the museum through another outreach day — I Heart Science — and felt driven to become more involved.

Marc A. Mapalo, a Ph.D. student in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, shared his findings as a tardigradologist — biologist who specializes in studying tardigrades, which are colloquially known as “water bears” — for the final “Lightning Talk” of the afternoon.

“I know a lot of people are interested in this, so that’s why I really like to share the research that I’m doing and let them understand what tardigrades are — hopefully for them to be inspired to not just study tardigrades but to do science,” said Mapalo, who is the only tardigrade researcher in the department.

In a classroom crowded with dozens of visitors interested in this microscopic animal that can survive extreme conditions, Mapalo displayed one of four tardigrade fossils that exist in the world on his microscope for attendees to observe.

Stephen P.G. Moore, a museum member of over two years and Fossil Day attendee, said he visits the museum about once every two months, including for special exhibits with his daughter who also attended a summer camp there last summer.

“There’s a lot of knowledge here, and the talks have been really, really good,” Moore said. “It’s my first Fossil Day, and I’ll come back to the next one.”

Scott R. Johnston, the vertebrate paleontology fossil preparator and technician at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, was the first of three experts who gave a 30-minute “Lightning Talk” to a packed room of children and adults, titled “So You Found a Fossil…What Next?”

“I’ve always joked that paleontology is the gateway drug to the sciences,” said Johnston, who helped staff Fossil Day.

“At the end of the day, am I exhausted? 100 percent,” Johnston added. “But it’s a good exhaustion. I know I’m doing something fun and important that will have an impact on people.”