Real Science

This was something that was constantly being discussed during our internship. We wanted our students to be participating in “real science.” We watched and questioned Dr. Bourke during our first week and a half there just to get an understanding of what it is that he was looking for. What would the students be doing? Of course no one just has dinosaur bones laying around in their backyards or classrooms, so how would this look? Once Dr. Bourke shared with us that he would be measuring the distance of the nasal passages of different dinosaurs we figured that we could have students do the sample work in the classrooms and then work on the Digital Dinosaurs website with real CT scans of dinosaur skulls. The key component of our module is having the students use the real CT scans to plot landmarks on dinosaur skulls. That information is then shared with the scientists in the paleo lab.