Prairiefire Horses

By Devin D.

            History and science come to life at the Prairiefire museum. From dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures to horses and insects, the museum has many exhibits that ASOP high school students enjoyed. When high school students arrived at the Prairiefire museum, on December 3rd, 2015, they were greeted by a life-size skeleton of a T-rex. It reminded me of “Rexy” from the movie, The Night At the Museum.

After being welcomed, the museum docent took the group into the exhibition hall to see the horse exhibit. The exhibit started with the early horses. Something I thought was interesting was that the first horses lived in what is now present day Nebraska. When the climate began to change, they migrated over to Eurasia (presumably by crossing the Bering land bridge). They didn’t migrate back, until the Europeans brought them back over. The exhibit ended with the modern day horses and a group photo of the us for the yearbook.

Before we went back to the school, we took a tour of the Discovery Room and got a chance to complete some interactive activities. A few students got to hold a real, live Madagascar Hissing cockroach and got to touch a corn snake. Although I didn’t want to hold the cockroach, I enjoyed the geology section. I learned that the amethyst is a kind of quartz, and it gets its purple color from iron impurities.