Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
CLOVIS — Dinosaurs are coming.
Clovis Community College is hosting paleontologists, curators, and astronomy experts to allow Kids College students a Jurassic experience.
Today at 9 a.m. at the Children’s Science Museum at CCC, the curator from Blackwater Draw Museum in Portales will be instructing students about all the museum has to offer.
Friday at 9 a.m., Tucumcari’s Mesalands Dinosaur Museum Director Gretchen Gurtler will be giving the students a crash course on dinosaurs from all eras.
“It’s nice to be able to see what’s in your own back yard,” Gurtler said.
Two of Gurtler’s students from the paleontology program at the museum will join her in Clovis to teach students and their families all about the dinosaurs on display at Mesalands.
“You’d be surprised, New Mexico is a wonderful space to study paleontology, because there are lots of active digs,” Gurtler said.
She also said they are bringing a life-sized bronze cast skull of an ankylosaurus gastonia, a large, spiked dinosaur from the Cretaceous period.
“It will give the kids a better idea of what exactly the creature looked like,” Gurtler said.
Mesalands Museum has the world’s largest collection of skeletons and fossils, according to Tishia Stew, Kid’s College science instructor.
Stew also said the students will have an opportunity to make their own fossils and see and touch the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Al Potthoff, director of CCC’s Kids College, said he is excited to see the new programs this summer.
“(We) worked very hard to get (these programs) here,” he said.
Potthoff said each of the events are open to the families of the students as well.
“We want the whole family there (because) if the family gets interested in the entire topic, it sets the stage for (the children) to get interested in science,” Potthoff said.
Information: 575-769-4969