Australia's Science Forum

Hi all in labbie land,
I'm after some new activities in the fossil module, and one of the teachers talked about putting together chicken bones to reconstruct a chicken??? Along the lines of putting the dinasaur bones together after they're dug up.
Has anyone done anything like this? I have visions of cooking a chook tonight, and saving all the bones!!
Ideas or recipes appreciated.
Ellice.

I did this once. I bought a bbq chook, took the chicken off (at home) to eat and then at school I put what was left in a really big beaker and boiled it on the hotplate. I kept the resulting chicken broth for the year 12 pasteurs experiment (after reducing it). I had to pick out any pieces of chicken as they boiled off and strain out the bones. It was a lot of work. The purpose of it was for year 1 and 2 kids to do a fossil dig in the sand pit. It was a bit of a fail without too much thought put into it. A lot of the bones were too small to be found but the ones they did find were put together well and they could 'fill in the gaps' with their imagination. If you weren't burying it in the sand pit I think it would work quite well! You will need to prepare it a couple of days in advance so that you have time to boil it and let the bones dry out.

too much work for one prac . You can buy skeleton kit
http://www.iqtoys.com.au/product/28641/ ... egosaurus/

Thanks for the suggestions. In the end we broke up some plates, and the kids had to put them back together (not glued, just in place). Went well.