Science center: Paging the Paleontology Party people
Longtime dinosaur fans and curious kids are invited to the Paleontology Party at Orlando Science Center this weekend.
The event includes hands-on activities, live shows and appearances by experts, including Jimmy Waldron, founder of the “Dinosaurs Will Always Be Awesome” podcast.
“It’s the perfect scenario for kids and adults to come out and just reconnect with these incredible animals that we used to play with in the sandbox and kind of get caught up on everything that we’ve missed in paleontology,” Waldron said. “There have been so many new discoveries in the last 30 years, in the last five years.”
He was bit by the dinosaur bug at age 4 during a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he said.
“This was back in the ‘80s, so this is when the T. rex [skeleton] was still standing upright, tail on the ground, and I was just blown away by just the magnitude of this creature,” he said. “Ever since then, it’s like, how could something so gigantic and so fierce-looking just be gone now?”
During the Paleontology Party, Waldron will showcase fossil finds made by children, including an 11-year-old British girl who made a major discovery while walking on a beach near Bristol with her father during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“They found this gigantic rock that wasn’t the rock. The rest is history,” Waldron said. It was part of Ichtyotitan severnensis, “the largest animal that ever lived, the largest marine reptile ever found.”
Other Paleontology Party festivities on Saturday and Sunday will include fossil finds presented by Florida Fossilized paleontologists, viewings of “Dinosaurs Alive” and “Dinosaurs of Antarctica” in the Dr. Phillips CineDome and the “Dinos in Lights” holiday show that’s incorporated into the museum’s Stan the T. rex figure.
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On Sunday, Savannah Boan of Gatorland will compare the ecosystems that were home to the dinosaur world and to today’s crocodilians. She’ll also talk about her conservation work in Cuba, Jamaica, South Africa and Australia.
Waldron, an Orlando resident and former paleontologist at the science center, has presented his knowledge in multiple locations across the country.
“Kids’ questions can be so much more insightful because they already know a lot of the basic details, but when they get to talk to a real paleontologist, they want to know some of the deeper stuff that’s been rattling around in the back of their minds,” he said.
Although Waldron claims a handful of favorite dinos – including Olorotitan (which means titanic swan) and Kosmoceratops (“take everything you know about triceratops and add 19 more horns”). But it all comes back to T. rex. He has one tattooed on his left arm.
“My tattoo is a teaching tool since all the bones we recovered from the skeleton are highlighted… are shaded in. The ones we’ve never found are just outlined,” he said.
“I can show people the really cool features of Stan without needing a 20-foot ladder,” Waldron said.
Paleontology Party activities are included with regular Orlando Science Center admission. Event hours are 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. For more information, go to OSC.org.