A triceratops skeleton was one of the fossils on display in a traveling museum at Saturdays Dino Days carnival at Gretna Community Church

      GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — Roars, growls and sounds of rushing water filled the Dino’s Big Dig exhibit by the Omaha Children’s Museum at the Nebraska State Fair on Monday.

      A woolly mammoth greeted visitors at the door as they walked from the humidity into the air-conditioned building. Animatronic dinosaurs such as a stegosaurus and a T. rex lined the room’s perimeter.

      In the middle of the room was a large pit where children uncovered “fossils” as they channeled their inner paleontologists.

      This was the first year the Omaha Children’s Museum was at the fair. Jo Beerman, traveling exhibit lead educator for the museum, said the exhibit is contracted for the next two years in a partnership with the State Fair.

      Beerman ran another activity at the exhibit called the mining sluice. The sluice was an elevated stream of water where participants could purchase bags of dirt, dump them into strainers in the running water and mine for gemstones and fossils that were in the dirt. Beerman said many adults have come into the exhibit to mine for gems and fossils.

      “There’s a difference between being a child and being childish,” Beerman said. “Everyone can be a child and play.”

      Beerman said having the exhibit at the fair is special because it exposes more people to learn something new.

      “It’s almost like we have a mobile museum,” Beerman said. “It just gives us a chance to bring a little bit of who we are here.”

------This article was originally published by Kelli Rollin.