Hands ON! Second Saturday

Estelle J. Kelsey Foundation Hands ON! Second Saturdays offers monthly free admission, hands-on art activities, storytelling, a docent-guided tour, live performances, and community collaborations. “Art Investigators” provides children the opportunity to engage with Museum staff and take a closer look at current work on view. New exhibitions, community collaborations, guest performances and monthly themes rotate in this engaging series of monthly programs.

SCHEDULE

Title sponsorship for Hands ON! Second Saturdays is provided by the Estelle J. Kelsey Foundation.

Hands ON! Second Saturday

SCHEDULE

Title sponsorship for Hands ON! Second Saturdays is provided by the Estelle J. Kelsey Foundation.

Hands ON! Second Saturday

SCHEDULE

Title sponsorship for Hands ON! Second Saturdays is provided by the Estelle J. Kelsey Foundation.

Hands ON! Second Saturday

SCHEDULE

Title sponsorship for Hands ON! Second Saturdays is provided by the Estelle J. Kelsey Foundation.

Nevada Has Dinosaurs?!

Josh Bonde, a born and raised Nevadan and proud member of the Te-Moak Band of Western Shoshone, explores his path to being an Indigenous scientist and discusses the dinosaurs that once resided in Nevada. Bonde received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Nevada, Reno, his M.S. in Earth Sciences from Montana State University-Bozeman, and his Ph.D. From the University of Nevada, Reno. He is an advocate for science education across the State of Nevada and is currently the Director at the Nevada State Museum.

The Birth of Icky IPA

Tom Young, Founder and Brewmaster, recounts the origin story of the Icky IPA, its iconic logo and the history of the Great Basin Brewing Company.

Triassic Vertebrate Tracks: A Record of the Oldest Mesozoic Tracks from Nevada

Join local Paleontologist Rebecca Hall as she explores Triassic trace fossils in Nevada.

Triassic trace fossils are well documented and researched from the Moenkopi Formation/Group, 240Ma, spanning across the Colorado Plateau of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico. These fossils, however, have never been formally documented or researched in Nevada until vertebrate trackways (footprints) from several different species were recently discovered. These specimens show exceptional preservation, including the presence of skin impressions. The discovery of tracks was first noted by Chester Longwell in 1928 when they were reported in a geological survey, but the tracks were never fully documented. After the discovery of vertebrate trace fossils in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area by Becky Hall, a proper scientific study is currently being conducted to contribute a better understanding of Triassic trace fossils in relation to regional and local reconstruction of paleoenvironments. These tracks represent the oldest Mesozoic vertebrate traces from Nevada, and some of the western-most terrestrial Triassic traces in North America expanding the record of Moenkopi ecosystems further afield.

Garrett Barmore: Nevada Way Back When

Join Garrett Barmore for a trip through time exploring Nevada’s geologic history as it relates to ichthyosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Learn about the W.M. Keck Earth Science and Mineral Engineering Museum, its collections and its history.

Garrett Barmore is the Curator at the W. M. Keck Earth Science and Mineral Engineering Museum at the University of Nevada, Reno. Barmore is an alumnus of UNR and received his Master’s in Museology from the University of Washington. Garrett has worked as the curator of the Keck Museum for over 10 years and has given hundreds of presentations and tours about Nevada’s ancient past. The Museum’s paleontology collection represents millions of years of life in Nevada.

Fossilia: Elaine Parks on Her Work

The apparent emptiness of the Nevada desert is very special to artist Elaine Parks and holds a psychic space, where the quiet and openness of the landscape allow her imagination to roam.

Parks’ inspiration comes from tufa and other kinds of rock formations and textures. Intended to elude identification yet remind the viewer of something they’ve seen in the outdoors, Parks’ work encourages the landscape to come alive in the viewers’ imagination. Join Elaine Parks as she discusses the artwork she produced for Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada.

Monsters from Deep Time: The Life and Death of Giant Nevada Ichthyosaurs

Neil Kelley and Randy Irmis will discuss new discoveries from Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park and other Nevada fossil sites that shed new light on the lives of Nevada’s state fossil, Shonisaurus. What did they eat? How did they reproduce? When did they go extinct? All these questions and more will be answered!

Neil Kelley is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist with a special interest in extinct marine reptiles that were the top ocean predators during the Mesozoic (the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’). He has participated in fossil excavations in China and across North America, including multiple sites in Nevada, and worked in museum collections around the world. Currently his work includes projects in Nevada, California, Alaska, and Tennessee. His research has been featured in High Country News, Smithsonian Magazine Online and on National Pubic Radio. He completed his PhD at the University of California, Davis and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution before coming to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Randall Irmis is Curator of Paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, and Professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics, both part of the University of Utah, where he has worked since 2009. He received his BS in Geology (Emphasis in Paleontology) from Northern Arizona University in 2004, and his PhD in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. Randy’s scientific research asks how animals with backbones (and the larger ecosystems they lived in) evolved through deep time, particularly in response to climate change and other global events. This work investigates fossil ecosystems and environments that span in age from over 300 million years old to less than 10,000 years old, and has resulted in many years of fieldwork in Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Argentina, and Ethiopia.