SUNBURY – Nearly 475 elementary students in the Shikellamy School District were a part of history Thursday. Students were first in the United States to watch the unveiling of a T-Rex exhibit at the Berlin Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany.
Paleontologist Barry James led the presentation and says it’s important for children to have a voice, “It means the world because science is great, but the children are our youth, which is our future. And to be able to do something like this with Germany, and if it wasn’t for the T-Rex skull, there wouldn’t be that connection. It took a lot of work from the owner to working with Berlin, to everybody here, to be able to let these kids see that.”
Uwe Moldrzyk and his staff at the Berlin museum gave the tour via Skype to the students. The bones of the T-Rex named Tristan were discovered in Montana in 2011. Shikellamy students participated in a workshop coordinated by James and his wife April at Sunbury Community Hospital in February. Students were able to look at some of the bones before CT scans were conducted.
April also helped lead the assembly, using music. She started a band called “The Paleos” which sing songs about dinosaurs, “The guys and are were goofing around one day and said ‘Hey we should start a group called ‘The Paleos.’’ And we all laughed. So I just started writing songs and couple of the guys got excited about it and started rehearsing, and because we have a passion for dinosaurs because we work with them every day, I think it just incorporated the passion into the music.”
State Representative Lynda Schlegel Culver (R-108th, Sunbury) and Governor Tom Wolf both sent well wishes for the assembly. They were unable to due to the ongoing budget negotiations.
