Manor Elementary School Takes 65M-Year-Old Trip

First grade students at Manor Elementary School got a hands-on look at dinosaur fossils.

The students were mesmerized by every word that dinosaur expert and bone hunter Ken Langer said. Using the length of the classroom as an example for the length and height of the ornithischian duckbilled dinosaur, Langer described to students what they were learning about.

Unlike most museums, the first grade students got to touch and feel the fossil samples that Langer brought to the class. Every child anxiously awaited their turn to see a bone, tooth, scale, jaw fragment or a dinosaur track permanently imbedded in soil. Little whispers were heard all through the room, "Are you finished yet? Can I see it? Can I touch that?"

Langer, an expert on dinosaur fossils, has grandchildren who are students at Manor Elementary. He said they go fossil hunting as a family adventure. In fact, on one trip, Langer said his grandson, Kenny, found a broken part of a fossil from Chelydra Serpentina -- known as a snapping turtle -- at the Poricy Park in Monmouth County, N.J.

This wasn't the dinosaur experts first trip to Manor Elementary and based on the reactions of the students, it doesn't look to be his last!