Looking at these two animals side by side you may see some resemblance. As you go below the surface, the skeletons of a chicken and a Tyrannosaurus rex show surprising similarities. On September 30, the Cowan Museum of History and Science in Kenansville, North Carolina brought this fact to life for a group of inquisitive kids.
Dinosaur Day was a free public event sponsored by the museum to coincide with the opening of a new exhibit, A Journey Through Deep Time: Dinosaur Bones, Rocks, and Fossils. As part of a fun-filled day, visitors learned about different species of dinosaurs, followed dinosaur footprints to the outdoor botanical garden to hunt for eggs containing tiny dinosaurs, examined fossils and discovered how they formed, and much more.
Dinosaur Egg Hunt
However, a special feature of the day included assembling chicken bones using a diagram of a T. rex as a model. Scientists think birds are descended from the same group of dinosaurs that include the T. rex. House of Raeford Farms’ Rose Hill, North Carolina processing location spent over a month gathering bones of 15 chickens to use for this activity. Acting as junior paleontologists, children carefully laid out the bones much like completing a puzzle.
“When a request came from the Cowan Museum for multiple sets of bones from a chicken, the idea was so fascinating that we wanted to help,” said Nicole Reynolds, Rose Hill Plant Manager. “However, I never dreamed of learning so much about chicken bones in the process. With the assistance of our First Processing Manager, Roberto Trevino, as well as my family, we managed to boil, separate, and whiten enough chicken skeletons to accomplish the task. We knew this would be a lot of fun for the children who participated.”
Roberto Trevino (House of Raeford), Anne Skinner (Cowan Museum), Nicole Reynolds (House of Raeford)
Anne Skinner is the museum’s STEM Educator and someone who has been interested in dinosaurs for a long time. “I was lucky enough to visit Montana several years ago and dig for dinosaur bones, one of which is housed in our museum,” said Skinner. “The idea for the Dinosaur Day event assembling bones of a chicken came from my visit to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. During our activity, the kids were very attentive and excited to see the results of their efforts. The children said they really enjoyed it.”
George and Ila Cowan, as a memorial to their daughter Joann Cowan Brown, founded the Cowan Museum of History and Science in 1981. Housed within the Kelly-Farrior House (ca. 1848), there is an adjacent historical park that includes a log cabin, general store, schoolhouse, and a tobacco barn. Of the 4,300 objects in the museum collections, most focus on 19th and 20th century tools and technology that document a history of innovation, resourcefulness, and creativity. Also on the grounds is a botanical garden with approximately 90 species of commercially available native plants.
