Children become scientists for a day

Natalie Essig, 8, knew she had something special on her hands when she scraped what appeared to be an ordinary rock against the playground pavement and it left a blue streak.

"It's a metamorphic rock," she said Saturday after having the specimen examined at the American Museum of Natural History's annual ID Day.

Natalie, an Upper East Side resident, was one of hundreds of children who brought fossils, feathers and other found treasures -- including an old clog -- for experts to study, identify and certify at ID Day. It is the museum's 13th year hosting the event, a sort of science-centric Antique Roadshow for youngsters.

"Most commonly, they bring figments of their imagination. Everything looks like an arrowhead or a human bone," though it turns out not to be, said Carl Mehling, a vertebrate paleontologist who manages part of the museum's dinosaur bones collection.

Still, the children always learn something new, he said. A conical piece of coral they thought was a dinosaur tooth may turn out to be twice as old as the oldest dinosaur, he said.

Experts used loupes, dissecting scopes and other tools to examine items and gave out certificates to make the finds official.

Budding scientist twins, Tara and Jasmine Silverman, 5, of Washington Heights, said their best finds have been during summer vacations on Canada's St. Joseph Island.

Jasmine said she found what she learned was a trilobite when she "just looked under the rocks." The sisters also had a sedimentary puddingstone certified.

Patrick Bear, 7, and his brother, Henry, 4, of Little Falls, N.J., learned that a dark fist-sized lump in their collection of rocks and fossils is a brachiopod fossil. The news seemed to fuel Patrick's enthusiasm for science. Asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he near-shouted: "Paleontologist!"