The Discovery Trail: A look inside Museum of the Earth

By Eric Banford
Tompkins Weekly

 

The Discovery Trail is a museum-library partnership between eight member organizations that have been collaborating for nearly two decades to help visitors explore nature, science, and culture. Each month, we’ll be exploring one of the sites, highlighting their offerings and taking a look at their impact in the community.

Discovery Trail partners include Cayuga Nature Center, Cornell Botanic Gardens, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, Museum of the Earth, Sciencenter, The History Center in Tompkins County, and Tompkins County Public Library.

This month we focus on the Museum of the Earth (MOTE), located just northwest of Ithaca at 1259 Trumansburg Rd. Established in 2003, MOTE is a venue of the Paleontological Research Institution, which provides the public the opportunity to explore our world through natural history displays, interactive science features, and art exhibitions.

MOTE has been part of the Discovery Trail since they opened, and plays host to every first-grade class in the county as part of the “Kids Discover the Trail!” (KDT!) program.

“We’ve been involved with the KDT! since the beginning,” said Dr. Maureen Bickley, MOTE’s Museum Education Manager. “It evolved from a dinosaur program to ‘Discovering Earth’s Mysteries,’ which is pretty much New York State geology lite. The first graders come and learn about how scientists use their observation skills to learn about the world around them,” she said.

Class visits are set up using a buddy system, where two classes from different schools visit at the same time. They split up into smaller groups to facilitate more hands-on programming, said Bickley. “Part of the program involves the classroom where we learn a little bit more about how rocks are made and how fossils are involved with rocks. And then the classes create different kinds of sedimentary rocks in a cup that the students get to take home with them. They have layers of rocks that they’ve seen in the gorges, and it includes a shell that they can excavate or leave in the layers,” she added.

In addition to the classroom time, there are education stations around the museum where docents are available to answer questions. “Students can try to figure out what’s inside of a rock, or look through rocks to find a fossil that they can take home,” said Bickley. “The docents are there to help, and they get to use tools like magnifying glasses, toothbrushes, things like that.” So it’s a very hands-on experience for each student.
A highlight of each visit is seeing the Hyde Park Mastodon, an adult male American mastodon excavated in Hyde Park, NY. “The mastodon was in a pond and we have a scene where the paleontologist Warren Allmon (Director of PRI) is feeling in the mud and describing what he’s feeling. We show a short clip of that to demonstrate that sometimes scientists don’t use their eyes, they use their hands and that’s how they find fossils. The students then put their hands in a box and they have to feel what’s inside and then draw it,” said Bickley.

“This school year 680 first grade classes from Ithaca, Trumansburg, Groton, Newfield, and Lansing visited the Museum of the Earth for a field study,” said Star Bressler, Executive Director of the Discovery Trail. “Prior to the field trips, a scientist from the Museum of the Earth visits the students’ classrooms to help orient them to what they might see and think about during their visit. At the museum, small groups of students rotate through several hands-on activity stations. Students are also given a coupon that allows them to return to the museum with their families, free of charge,” said Bressler.

“I just love that this program aallows every child in Tompkins County a chance to come and visit the cultural areas where they live,” shared Bickley. “And then when they bring their families back, they are actually teaching their families what they learned. That to me is the top part of education, teaching something that you feel you know well enough. That is the ultimate step in education,” she said.

Opening June 30 through the end of the year, MOTE will host a new exhibit called “Secrets of the Skull: From Titanoboa to Tuatara.” This exhibit will help you discover the features that skulls have in common and how they allow us to trace their evolutionary history and life stories and explore the many interlocking parts and their functions.

There will also be fossil collecting field trips throughout the summer on the third Friday of each month. And on the second Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, you can bring in fossils that you have found to get help identifying them. There are also regular museum tours that focus on current exhibits, these run Mondays at 11:30 a.m., Fridays at 11:30 a.m., and Saturdays at 11 a.m.

For more information, visit: priweb.org