Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/370921
the real thing, but dissolve in water. Kids love to collect them apparently. Delaquis hands out our tools. Hesitantly, we dig. We sit, kneel or squat in the dirt under the blazing sun for hours, scraping with our tiny metal picks (exactly the same as the ones dentists use). We brush the soil away with our paintbrushes. Fossils are fragile and a slip of the pick can easily cause damage. I guess it takes a trained eye to quickly distinguish a fos- sil fragment from the surrounding earth. We call on Delaquis to help us here. We're told to look for something hard and reddish, but this is very difficult: in the fierce sunlight, every- thing is bleached out (including us). Yet we have some success – a few small teeth, some pieces of rib and fish vertebrae. Too bad there's no sign of a giant skull. To preserve this fossil-rich part of the Manitoba Escarpment, the museum has bought a fair chunk of land around an old ben- tonite mine and most of its dig sites are cen- tred here. Looking around at the gentle, mostly agricultural, scenery, I try to imagine how it once was – deep under the sea and swarming with strange creatures. I feel as though I am, in a way, helping to bring this lost world back to life. Buoyed by the thought, I drink more water and dig harder. GP Morden's Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre offers half-day to five-day fossil digs for the public regu- larly during the summer. Adults: approx. $100 per day. Lunches are provided. Hotel accommodations can be made through CAA Travel. ere are also school visits, special digs and activities for children 10 and older. www.discoverfossils.com A paintbrush is used to remove layers of shale from the fossils. cfdc, liz bryan A grid is set up to ensure all details related to the specimen are accurately recorded.