Dinosaur Festival at the Australian Museum

📍Australian Museum, Sydney

📅 April 2022

Why was T. rex so famous? How do we find out how a T. rex died? (through a T. rex autopsy of course!). What should you do if you discover a fossil? Every year the Australian Museum hosts the Dinosaur Festival - an extravaganza of life-size dinosaurs roaming the museum, science talks, and hands-on interactions with real fossils.

Being a palaeontologist definitiely comes in handy this week, as we explore everything there is to know about dinosaurs! Working with the Programming and Education teams as a presenter, I was creating and presenting up to four shows a day for the entirity of the Dinosaur Festival! Aligning with the touring exhibition Lego: Dinosaurs! this massive school holidays event saw thousands of people passing through the museum over the week - with up to 5000 people on just the Saturday!

This was an epic opportunity to talk about my own research - the Found a Fossil project - to discuss the importance of the public in finding new dinosaur species - you never know, you could be the next one to find a brand new skeleton! After managing our life-sized sauropod Bruno for the morning, it was then time to don the labcoat in time for our T. rex autopsy! From there, we would have touch-tables with real fossils, where kids and adults alike could come and have all of their dinosaur questions answered by a real palaeontologist (i.e., me!).