Paleontology enthusiasts both young and old crowded the Burke Museum’s main floor Saturday to explore the natural history museum’s annual Dinosaur Day exhibit.

Parents, children and students alike attended the event to find out more about the creatures and what effect they had on human life.

One of the most popular exhibits was also one of the more subdued and low-key. A bit off in a corner was a table run by a small group of students from a class known as Burke 101.

“The idea is to get people out in the galleries that are being trained in the material so they know what they’re saying, and so that people have a chance to touch stuff,” said a member of the class manning the table.

Other exhibits included a children’s craft area, in which volunteers and museum employees oversaw the construction of paper ammonites, portraying an extinct group of marine animals.

With a stick attached to the “ammonite” at one end and a child’s hand at the other, the visible colour spectrum could be seen floating between two and four feet off of the ground in the form of seemingly sentient paper creatures.

Visitors were also treated to the opportunity to view Burke paleontologist Bruce Crowley prepare a Brontothere jaw for eventual display. Nearby him was a table full of fossilized plant life, manned by Elizabeth Nesbitt, invertebrate paleontology curator for the museum.

“I’ve been curator here for 10 years,” Nesbitt said. “I love my job, it’s fabulous. The Burke is growing, and the Burke is doing lots of different things, so it’s very exciting.”

Aside from being a curator at the museum, Nesbitt also teaches “Dinosaurs,” the largest single course on campus.

Judging by her stack of completed extra-credit papers, 300 or so of her 700 students came to the event, possibly adding a fourth digit to an estimate of the total attendance for the event.

A table across the room, manned by Burke curator Christian Sidor, displayed numerous bones from a Triceratops, among other dinosaurs.

Sidor has been the vertebrate paleontology curator at the Burke Museum since September 2005, and has been very busy ever since he began working at the museum.

Last December, Sidor was in Antarctica, studying ancient life there. This year, however, found him far from his last journey.

“This December, I was somewhere completely different,” Sidor said.

“I was in West Africa, in the Niger [region] just south of the Sahara. Along with about four other researchers, we had a grant from the National Science Foundation to look at the climate and the animals and plants that were living near the equator about 255 million years ago.”

Reach reporter Anthony Michael Erickson at news@thedaily.washington.edu.