Fossils show similarities between past and present
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Nov 29/00) - John Alexander was talking time on an incomprehensible scale: not years, decades, centuries or millennia -- eons.
Yellowknife's resident dinosaur expert put his knowledge and experience to work Sunday in an imagination-firing, multi-media presentation on how what's old is still new.
"It's what I think of as echoes of life," Alexander explained. "It shows the kids everything didn't become extinct. Things that lived 350 million years ago are still walking around today."
Using fossilized and modern examples, Alexander demonstrated to the enthusiastic crowd of kids and parents at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre how some things stand the test of time.
All of the fossils used were from Alexander's vast collection, and will form part of a "Living Fossil" exhibit the centre will house for the next three months.
The displays emphasized similarities between past and present by presenting examples of current life forms -- an eagle feather, pine cones, insects, wood and a nautilus (a shelled sea organism) -- with hundred million year-old fossilized examples of the same things.
This wasn't the first time Alexander had shared his knowledge of dinosaurs with a group of people. It was the second time.
The first happened in 1963, when Alexander was an enterprising Grade 5 student. Even way back then kids were fascinated by dinosaurs and Alexander capitalized on the fascination to the tune of three cents per head admission.
Then he recycled the presentation into an ace school project.
This time around things were a little more elaborate, with three video players going at once, dinosaur toys, large models of dinosaur skeletons and games.
And this time around admission was free, proving what middle-aged people have been saying forever: not only do things not degenerate with time, but sometimes they actually improve.
