Yes, one can get revved up over a toe bone, if said bone once belonged to a Permian reptile, you're on a paleontology dig in northwest Texas, and the tiny bone is your own down & dusty discovery.

That's what happened to Shirley Smalley this summer.   The Houston Museum of Natural Science sponsors paleontology digs to a famous site in Seymore, primarily for science teachers.   Shirley is both a retired geologist and a regular volunteer at the museum, qualifications that earned her an invitation to the dig. (The bones will appear in a future exhibit at the museum.)

Shirley uncovered a number of fossils, but this particular find was immediately identified by dig director Robert Bakker as the toe bone of an Araeoscelis.   Dr. Bakker, visiting curator of paleontology at the museum, later sketched the beast and presented the drawing to Shirley.   She says the Araeoscelis is now her "spirit animal."

Most Friday mornings during the school year, visitors to the museum can watch docent Shirley at work, typically surrounded by enthusiastic fourth graders and their teachers.    If you're really nice to her, you might get a private tour of any of a number of exhibits – she usually trains on all the major exhibits, including the famous hominid fossil Lucy, scheduled to arrive in Houston August 31!

Shirley has been volunteering for five years.

Shirley Smalley (facing camera) and her "spirit animal."

"I enjoy the museum personally," she says.   "And I love turning kids onto science. There is nothing like paleontology to do this, because with the exhibits at the museum you can build a story that takes them over time using the progression of the species, and they get it.  A lot of the kids come in knowing quite a bit about dinosaurs.   Starting with what they already know, I can then talk about what happened on the earth before the dinosaurs and what happened afterwards."

The history doesn't change, nor does her story, week after week.   But "I still get excited when talking to the kids," she says.