ITHACA, N.Y. -- Imagine yourself still a child, digging in the sand, and your shovel strikes something hard. You dig farther to find the obstruction is not an average stone, but a huge dinosaur tooth. A moment later, you dig out a large claw. 

An event like this could happen at the Paleontological Research Institution Museum of the Earth's new exhibit that gives children the experience of a paleontological dig. Opening June 18, the Young Explorer's Dino Dig, made possible through a $2,000 Community Partnership Board (CPB) grant acquired by Women in Science at Cornell University (WISC), marks the first in a series of exhibits in the museum's new Young Explorers Program designed to create a broader learning environment and to make the museum more interactive and attractive to a younger crowd. 

"Our museum is currently very reading intensive," said Pete St. John, the museum's exhibits manager. "This exhibit adds content for younger kids [ages] 2 to 6, and that's an audience we're trying to target more." 

Set up on four outdoor sand tables -- low picnic tables with benches and a flat sandbox on top and bone casts in the sand -- the exhibit approximates what it might be like to dig for, and actually discover, dinosaur bones. The exhibit is a prototype that, if successful, could spawn a much larger dino dig.

WISC members have volunteered at the Museum of the Earth since it opened in 2003 and have been strong collaborators on the Young Explorers Program there. WISC supports Cornell women interested in science and related careers through opportunities for networking, career education and community service. 

"We want little kids to be really engaged and introduce them to the basics of paleontological digs," said Ruth Hall, the next academic year's WISC president and an incoming senior majoring in biology and society in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. 

PRI volunteer coordinator Frank Straub first approached Hall about the exhibit idea and the museum's Young Explorers Program, and he told her about the availability of grants like the one offered at the CPB, a program of the Cornell Public Service Center that gives grants to student-initiated grassroots service-learning projects. 

WISC volunteers will survey children who try out the exhibit to gauge interest and fine-tune the program. They also will volunteer as museum docents to monitor and help out at the outdoor tables. 

"We are trying to evaluate whether the public is going to like the exhibit and whether it is going to fly with the kids," said St. John. 

The four sand tables are about 3 feet high, 3.5 feet long and 2 feet wide, with the sand boxes themselves about 6 inches deep, complete with lids. The casts recreate dinosaur claws, teeth, skulls, bones and egg nests. There are 40 casts in all, spread evenly and tethered to the bottom of each table. 

"The casts are cool; they are very realistic," said St. John.

Three of the boxes are filled with sand for younger children, and two contain sand and wax mixtures to make it a little harder for older children to dig. Tools include brushes and wooden picks. Docents will periodically rebury the casts and reset sand and wax tables. Museum designers are also experimenting with where to place the exhibit as the sun melts the wax. 

If the exhibit is successful, a much larger version could be in the works, one that "puts us on the national map with a full mammoth or placoderm," added St. John. A placoderm is a Devonian fish with bone armor as large as a school bus.

The museum staff plans other Young Explorers stations in the future, such as a set of magnets on a wall where children might recreate a dinosaur skeleton. Such future exhibits are funded in part by Smith-Barney/Citigroup and the Tompkins Charitable Gift Fund.