PHILADELPHIA, February 14, 2018

Philadelphia’s dinosaur museum is throwing its 10th annual Paleopalooza festival, Saturday and Sunday, March 3 and 4, with special guest Buddy the T. rex from PBS Kids “Dinosaur Train” and fossils good enough to eat.

Local graffiti artist Christian Rodriguez, whose work has been displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will recreate the famous Hadrosaurus foulkii, New Jersey’s state dinosaur which is on view at the Academy, on a giant chalk board while visitors watch over the two days.

Academy scientists will show rare dinosaur and other fossils from the museum’s collection, including some belonging to Thomas Jefferson and a 2.5 million-year-old musk ox skull collected by William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, at Big Bone Lick State Park, Ky.

Kids can take pictures with the star of “Dinosaur Train” when Buddy the T. rex makes appearances at 12:30, 1:30 and 3 p.m. both days. Adults and kids will dig digging for small fossils to take home, but the real thrill may come to those with a sweet tooth.

The Franklin Fountain and Shane Confectionery of Philadelphia will sweeten the weekend for everybody when they build a wonderous edible wunderkammer, a German word meaning cabinet of curiosity. Inspired by the Academy’s specimen collection, the cabinet of confections will be constructed throughout both days, and visitors can sample bites of sweets that might bite back.

Think sandstone cookies embedded with bones hand-sculpted from sugar, real bugs embedded in amber hard candy, and a dinosaur nest made of cake with buttercream-filled chocolate eggs. The grand finale comes at 4 p.m. both days when visitors will be able to consume the remaining candy specimens.

Need we say more? Paleopalooza is free with regular museum admission and is obviously fun for both adults and children. For information about all the other activities (besides eating candy) and to buy tickets online at a discount, visit ansp.org.

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News media contact:
Carolyn Belardo, Director of Public Relations, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
215-299-1043, belardo@ansp.org, | Twitter @AcadNatSciPR | Press Room: www.ansp.org/press