There is a place about an hour away from my house called Bey’s Rock Shop. It’s really an amazing place, it’s huge and packed full of rocks, gems and fossils. I had never heard of it until the local paper ran a story about them. They have been around forever as a family owned business and the store takes up about 8000 square feet. It was born from the owners love of rock and gem collecting but what really peaked my interest was the collection of fossils. Especially, the Dinosaur fossils.
As I have mentioned in previous articles, my 5 year old is obsessed with dinosaurs, it’s all he cares about. Every book, every toy, every game, has something to do with dinosaurs. So, when we found out there was a store within an hours drive that had real dinosaur fossils for sale, we just had to make the road trip.
We spent the last part of the trip drilling into the boys that once we were in the store, they were not to touch anything since we really didn’t know what to expect. Fortunately, they were well behaved and it was actually a pretty friendly atmosphere. The selection of dinosaur fossils was pretty small but still pretty impressive. I mean, where else could you go that you could actually expect to be able to buy a 100 million year old dinosaur fossil! The more shocking bit of news was that they really weren’t that expensive. Most of them ranged from $20 – $40.
I let both of my boys pick out the fossil of their choice. They had some Triceratops fossils but they were mostly chunks of leg bone that didn’t really look like much. They had fossilized dinosaur poop which I found to be hilarious but didn’t interest the kids all that much surprisingly. They also had several Spinosaurus tooth fossils which proved to be the winner. Harrison, my Dinosaur lover, picked out a $35 100 Million year old Spinosaurus tooth that was first discovered in Egypt in the early 1900′s. The store owner told us that most countries have made it illegal to sell dinosaur fossils so they are getting harder and harder for him to stock. I can understand why those countries have those rules but still, I was pretty happy we got to buy something so old and so damn cool.
My younger son, Sean, ended up skipping over the fossil’s altogether and got a stone that had been shaped into a ball. Much to our dismay, he often tries to bounce it off things no matter how many times he is told it is not a super ball!
Here is a pic of the Spinosaurus tooth fossil that we purchased
