"We don’t tell the kids what it is. We say ‘Smell it, do whatever you need to do to take a guess at what you think it is."
Dan Carignan, educational director of the Florida Agricultural Museum, has a treat for youngsters who visit its new complex, the Old Florida Museum, which last August relocated from St. Augustine to the ag museum in Palm Coast.
In a place that specializes in telling the stories of things old – the state’s Spanish colonial presence, an authentic 1880s Florida Cracker homestead, Florida’s role as the first destination of the Underground Railroad, the history of Florida’s citrus industry, the state’s equestrian heritage – Carignan shares the granddaddy of artifacts for visitors to handle and ponder: As part of the Old Florida Museum’s Dirt Detectives archaeology program, Carignan passes around a piece of coprolite that’s at least 66 million years old.
“We don’t tell the kids what it is,” he says. “We say ‘Smell it, do whatever you need to do to take a guess at what you think it is.’ When it comes back to me, I say, ‘OK, I will tell you what this is – it’s petrified dinosaur poop.’ And all the kids are like ‘Ewwww, that’s poop!’ And you know that’s what they go home and tell mom and dad at the dinner table – ‘I touched poop today! It was awesome!’ ”
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