Day at the museum

The younger daughter was in town for the weekend. The original plan had been to go up to Cartersville to Etowah Mounds State Park to gape at the mounds and gaze at the Mississippian artifacts in the park museum, but it rained. So we settled for the Fernbank Museum of Natural History here in Atlanta.

The place wasn't nearly as busy as you'd think it would be on a rainy Saturday -- it strikes me as the perfect place to bring kids, especially little boys, because they all seem to go through a Calvin-like phase where they're fascinated by T. Rex -- but maybe more families are seeing museums that charge admission as an expense they can't afford.

The museum is currently hosting a traveling exhibit, "Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries," that's quite interesting. Turns out a lot more dinosaurs apparently had feathers than was suspected a few years ago. Some of the newer finds are also really, really strange looking. The colors are all pure speculation, of course, but the tail knobs, horns in odd places, and other weirdness shown in the dioramas are based on actual fossils. All in all, an interesting afternoon.

[Persons in photo are total strangers who just happened to be standing by Giganotosaurus when the S.O. took the picture.]