Little Lincoln loves dinosaurs, fossils and the South Australia Museum.
So, when the four-year-old from Happy Valley finished his chicken dinner one night, he had a great idea.
He was going to give the Museum a ‘dinosaur fossil’.
“It was completely his idea,” Lincoln’s dad Damian said.
“We were having drumsticks for dinner and he started cleaning his up. I asked what he was doing, and he said he was going to send it to the Museum.”
A short time later, the South Australian Museum received a letter from Lincoln, transcribed by dad and addressed to “Dear Museum people”.
Enclosed; one chicken thighbone ‘fossil’.
“After many visits to your museum I can tell that you really like cool bones,” Lincoln said in the letter. “I also have a really cool bone that I would like to share with you, it came from a chicken, which is also a dinosaur.
“I left it with some ants for a while so it’s nice and clean for you.
“I hope you find it as cool as I do.”
Well, the Museum people did find it as cool as Lincoln, and invited him for a visit with mum Nicola, Dad and big sister Aurora, 6 (pictured top).
While at the Museum, the family enjoyed a guided tour, a visit to the Museum’s Discovery Centre and had a chat about fossils with one of our scientists, Vian.
In the Discovery Centre, Lincoln saw a fossil of his favourite dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and was able to compare his tiny chicken thighbone to the giant thighbone fossil of a Camarasaurus dinosaur found in Wyoming, US.
Big sister Aurora was also in her element at the Museum.
She wants to be a rock scientist when she grows up and was able to talk about many of the samples in the Museum’s Minerals Collection.
Her favourite dinosaur is the triceratops.
“We have lots of rocks at home,” Damian said. “I’ve told Aurora a rock scientist is a geologist, but she still says rock scientist.
“Both Aurora and Lincoln are always asking to go to the Museum.
“They’re both very keen on this place.”
Find out more on the South Australian Museum’s palaeontology collection.
