Marconi Academy
Chicago, Illinois
Jennifer Stites, 7th & 8th grade

About the School:

Marconi Academy, at 230 N. Kolmar Av., is a Chicago Public Elementary School serving the West Garfield Park community (200 N and 4600 W). Our vision is to inspire all students, including diverse learners, to strive for academic excellence. Our goal is to prepare the students to serve as productive members of their community. The mission of Marconi, as a Fine Arts Academy, is to provide students with academic experiences that are richly enhanced by the infusion of technology and fine arts across the curriculum. Our participation n Project Exploration will help to advance that mission. Ms. Stites' class is a group of very busy seventh and eighth graders. They are excited to be involved with Project Exploration. Their many and varied interests include sports, such as ice-skating, swimming, soccer, and basketball. They are also interested in such diverse topics as hunting, heart surgery, insects, and, of course, dinosaurs!

Student Questions:

1. How can you tell if a fossil is from a young large species or an adult small species?

   SERENO: In humans, the easiest thing to look at is the teeth because we know there are new teeth at 6 and 12 years of age. There are also clues in the bones -- fusions between bone parts that occur with age. And that is what we use with dinosaurs. The vertebrae are made of several parts which are separate only in young individuals and fuse with maturity.

2. Parent Question:
   How many bones do you think you will find on this expedition?

   SERENO: Hundreds! I have been trying to keep up with our log book of bones, and that has been a difficult job.

3. How best, as individuals, can you prepare for an expedition like this?

   SERENO: I prepare by trying to think of everything I might need in the weeks before an expedition. I also try to exercise because I know there will be a lot of hard work and I don't want to be very sore. I make a checklist of things to remember and send it to all team members. There are a lot of things to prepare -- including medicine and personal papers -- like visas, passports, and international drivers licenses.
   

4. How long does it take to excavate a full skeleton?
   
   GRAY: This depends on the rocks that hold the fossils (like how hard they are), how much of the animal is there, how big it is and how many people you have working on it. A huge beast like Jobaria could take weeks to dig up, even in relatively soft rock with half a dozen good excavators working on it all day, every day.

5. How can you tell the difference between male and female fossils?

   SERENO: The simple answer -- no one can. Don’t believe the hype about Sue in some corners. Ever try to sex a living reptile? Believe me, it ain’t easy, and none of the parts are hard or leave any mark on a skeleton. Worse yet, dinosaurs don’t seem to have any obvious hard-part sex differences, like horns. They all look pretty much the same. When we have found a 50-50 split in a bunch of skeletons, with some looking one way and some looking slightly different, we don’t know which is which.