CRESTVIEW — He may not carry a whip and go by the nickname “Indiana,” but paleontologist Dr. John Paul Jones gets local students just as excited about ancient artifacts as the movie archeologist with whom he shares a surname.
While Indiana Jones concentrates on ancient human civilizations, “Crestview Jones’” eras of expertise predate humans by millions of years.
Jones has unearthed parasaurolophus eggs in Montana, ancient sharks in Upstate New York, fossilized sea life in the New Mexico desert, and bits of a wooly mammoth just three hours east of Crestview in the Suwanee River.
While fossils can capture information about animals and plants 10,000 or more years old, it was the 165-million-year reign of the dinosaurs that most captured the attention of Walker Elementary School second-graders Tuesday morning.
FOSSILS
Students enjoyed holding or touching dino fossils including eggs, a toenail, raptor claws and a polished segment one student pronounced “pretty” until she learned it was a fossilized dropping.
“You can learn a lot from poop,” Jones said — to a chorus of “eews” and giggles — including what the animal ate and when it lived.
One object that impressed the students, though they weren’t allowed to touch it, was a parasaurolophus egg worth half a million dollars on which the Smithsonian Institution has first dibs, Jones said.
He will soon be taking the egg to England for a high-resolution CT scan to determine what the baby dinosaur fossilized inside looks like.
“I was excited over the toenail,” said Jones, who discovered it in a dried creek bed downstream from a nest of dino eggs. “Then when I saw the egg, I was like, ‘whoa!’”
SMART AND MEAN
“What’s your favorite dinosaur?” student Garrett McCallum inquired.
Jones said he likes the Utahraptor, one of the largest of the sickle-clawed raptors, “because he was the smartest and the meanest.” At 25 feet tall, it towered over the 6-foot velociraptor in the “Jurassic Park” films
The students left the room with an increased understanding of how ancient remains help today’s scientists understand the past. And Jones took home a souvenir as well.
The students in Debbie Stephens’ class made him an “I (heart) dinosaurs” T-shirt like the ones they made to wear to his presentation.
Stephens said Jones’ presentation struck a personal chord with her.
“I have decorated my room every year for 40 years with dinosaurs and this is the first time I’ve seen a real paleontologist,” she said.
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: 'Crestview Jones' gets Walker second-graders excited about fossils (VIDEO, PHOTOS)