Kids swarmed off the bus and into the playground at the West Coast fossil park after a chilly early morning bus ride from the MTN Sciencentre in Cape Town.
Kids met Mr Skinny in the museum. Of course, as our guide Heidi pointed out, if the body is a record of earth's history, mankind would only be a hair on top of the head. This is Yusuf Bharoochi with Amir Hoffman, 6, who divides his time between Tamboerskloof and Mitchell's Plain, and is in Grade R at Tamboerskloof primary.
Heidi Duncan was the volunteer who took us back in time - but not all the way back to the dinosaurs; that bit was washed out to sea long ago. (Which might have been easier because the sea covered the town of Langebaan Lagoon and the M7 freeway and in fact much of the old phosphate mine site we were standing on, at various points in Africa's history). Still, a couple of million years ago is good going!
The kids enjoyed hanging out with Mr Skinny prior to piling back into the bus for the trip down to the dig sites, which have been left open - complete with the lattice of square marking the bones sticking up out of the old riverbed - with a wooden boardwalk around anda greenhouse-style canopy around.
This last picture is Yusuf Bharoochi, 8, of Grassy Park. He's a grade 1 student at Vista Nova school in Rondebosch.
