Students Explore Bones, Fossils in Snee Hall

Students and members of the Ithaca community stepped back in time Wednesday night at the “A Night at the Snee Museum” event, which transformed Snee Hall into an interactive museum featuring mastodon bones, dinosaur footprints and fossils. The event, which was organized by the Science of Earth Systems Student Association, engaged the Cornell community by allowing visitors to hold and take home fossils from Cayuga Lake and peer through microscopes in order to examine rock surfaces. “We wanted to show Earth and Atmospheric Science department’s unique collection of mineral and fossils,” said Tanvi Chedda ’16, president of the Science of Earth Systems Student Association. “We wanted to communicate its research in incredibly beautiful, powerful and complex natural systems.”
Snee Hall is home to Cornell’s earth and atmospheric sciences department and houses displays that include an extensive collection of fossils, a seismograph station and the Heasley Museum, which contains minerals and glow-in-the-dark rocks. The event was organized as part of an outreach effort from the department, according to Ming Khan ’18, secretary of Science of Earth Systems Association.