Last Friday, the Spatial Ecology and Paleontology Lab (SEPL) hosted its weekly Fossil Friday event. This hands-on outreach program invites participants to uncover ancient history, explore real fossils and learn about the discoveries made by scientists beneath the approximately 80-foot drop of Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming.
The goal of Fossil Friday is straightforward: to build a community centered on science outreach and enable people to interact directly with fossils. The event is open to students, faculty and Atlanta locals alike, offering a relaxed space to learn, discover and have fun.
Participants receive a spoonful of mixed fossil material in a petri dish — each specimen dating from approximately 4,000 to 9,000 years old, extracted from a rock matrix in Natural Trap Cave. Here, attendees learn to distinguish between bone and rock, identify small fragments and become familiar with paleontological tools and techniques. The event’s environment is laid-back, with movie soundtracks playing in the background to add ambiance, making science feel more like exploration with friends.
But it’s not just about discovery for discovery’s sake. The specimens help Tech researchers study how vertebrate communities around Natural Trap Cave have changed over time — Fossil Friday contributions feed into research on species shifts, climate change and even carbon dating.
“The bones in this cave are extremely entry-level friendly … like you look at it and you’re like, that’s a cartoon bone, [while] there’s other ones that are a little more broken up…People only occasionally need help, like it’s really fast to pick up on, which means it’s really rewarding for people…,” said Katherine Slenker, Ph.D. BIOS at SEPL and event coordinator.
More than a learning activity, Fossil Friday also serves as a bridge between Tech and Atlanta, inviting people of all ages and backgrounds to connect with science in a hands-on way.
“It would say it’s like 70 percent to create a community space for [fossils] and really do some community outreach. Fossil Friday isn’t just open to the Tech community; it’s open to the Atlanta community at large, so it is a way to get people kind of involved in science in general, not necessarily just paleontology,” said Slenker, mentioning the other 30 percent is to help graduate students save time sifting through the samples themselves.
What participants uncover during Fossil Friday doesn’t end in the petri dish — it becomes part of the lab’s broader work on ecosystems and climate.
“We can look at how the animal community there has changed through time…Our lab specializes in the rodents and the rabbits in the area. We [also] do collect all of the lizards [remains]…We can get a lot of climate information to inform climate analyses, but also just kind of learn how that landscape has changed,” Slenker said.
Fossil Friday showcases the passion of the researchers behind the work . Slenker didn’t have a typical childhood fascination with dinosaurs, unlike many young people who seem to share an interest in the extinct animals. Instead, her journey began in college through an evolution class that led her to volunteer at a natural history museum, where she cleaned fossils and worked with dinosaur bones. That experience eventually took her on a six-week dig in Kenya, where she cultivated her love for mammals — an interest that carried her through graduate school and eventually to the SEPL lab at Tech.
Today, her work highlights why programs like Fossil Friday are important: they connect the public with science while contributing to research with global implications.
“Because we have such a neat time series at Natural Trap Cave, we can actually look at how these communities have changed in response to climate change events, especially drought…[and] it’s really important to understand that because droughts are becoming more severe, more frequent out west, and so if we can understand how they respond to these past droughts, it’s really useful [to understand] how these large herbivores are going to move in response to these drought events and to help reduce human wildlife conflict,” Slenker said.
While science offers insights into the past and present, Fossil Friday also thrives as a weekly space for community connection. Fossil Friday is an ongoing event held every Friday from 3 – 5 p.m. in the Ford Environmental Science and Technology Building. Open to all ages, Fossil Friday invites visitors to join in at their own pace. Whether students are looking for a fun way to unwind with friends or kids are eager to explore fossils for the first time, the event makes science approachable and engaging for everyone. In the end, Fossil Friday is not just about unearthing old bones, but building new connections.