A full day paleontology workshop for children aged 9 to 15, held at Sthala, the Above Zenith Makerspace in Ulsoor. The workshop combines classroom sessions on fossils and deep time with two extended hands-on activities where kids work with the same kinds of tools paleontologists use in the field.

The day starts with the fundamentals: what fossils are, how they form, and the difference between body and trace fossils, opened with a Fossil Detective Game. From there, the Clock of Eras activity helps kids grasp deep time, before they build the timeline of life from the Precambrian to the present. A dedicated session covers India’s own fossil record, from the Dinosaur Fossil Park in Gujarat and the ammonites of Kutch to the Tamil Nadu petrified forest and Narmada Valley mammals.

The second half of the day is fully hands-on. Each child makes a clay impression and pours their own Plaster of Paris cast, then moves to a simulated dig block where they extract a fossil using hammers, chisels, and brushes, and clean it the way it is done on a real dig.