{"id":28773,"date":"2025-12-03T16:45:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T16:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=28773"},"modified":"2026-03-17T19:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T19:13:10","slug":"caring-for-fossils-at-the-science-museum-of-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2025\/12\/caring-for-fossils-at-the-science-museum-of-minnesota\/","title":{"rendered":"Caring for fossils at the Science Museum of Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"videoWrapper video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vYZphspoc5s?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To Violet McCann \u201926, a former \u201cdinosaur kid,\u201d the thought of lasting through time was always fascinating\u2014so much so that she once imagined becoming a fossil herself, \u201cpreserved in deep time forever.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That early fascination eventually led her to the Science Museum of Minnesota, where she works as a biology intern preparing and preserving animals that have died of natural causes. \u201cI&#8217;ve always appreciated nature,\u201d she says, \u201cbut working specimen prep made me appreciate it even more. I feel such an overwhelming sense of pride just to preserve something.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To her museum mentor, Violet\u2019s curiosity and care set her apart as someone already thinking like a scientist. \u201cEvery day, Violet\u2019s excited to take on whatever the day has in store and shows a clear talent for the work she\u2019s doing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019ll be exciting to see the knowledge and skills she takes away\u2014and hopefully, a deeper sense of which field she sees herself belonging to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Violet, the internship became a chance to apply what she\u2019d learned, and proof of how far she\u2019s come. Guided by mentors who encouraged her curiosity, she began to see herself as part of the scientific community she\u2019s always admired. \u201cBeing here reminded me of my love for science,\u201d she says, \u201cand that I\u2019m capable of going into science.\u201d<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not every day that you get to fulfill your childhood dreams. For Violet McCann &#8217;26, that dream came true through an internship at the Minnesota Science Museum.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":677,"featured_media":31091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-28773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-newswire","tag-biology","mediatype-articles","collections-biologyhomepage"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":[35],"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"Sia Bombhore \u201929","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28773"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31735,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28773\/revisions\/31735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}