Jerry Harris of Southern Methodist University reports that when he was at the Denver Museum, a father pointed to a mount of a _Diplodocus_ skeleton and remarked, "Look, son, these are the bones of an animal that never existed!"

Once while I was at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, a father was pointing to a model of a large Eyrops amphibian reconstruction mounted atop a trail of large amphibian footprints. The dad remarked, "Son, here's a prehistoric alligator. Overhearing the conversation from my postion a few feet away, I gently corrected the man, stating, "Well, actually it's an extinct amphibian." The father, looking somewhat irritated with me, promptly turns to his son and loudly adds, "and here, Billy, are the alligator's footprints."

My friend's 3 year old son, Matthew, who had already become a dinosaur adict, was with him at the Cleveland Museum when another boy somewhat years older nearby pointed to a cast of an Archaeopteryx (early bird), calling it a "dinosaur." Looking annoyed, Matthew promptly scolded his rival, saying with remarkably good enunciation for a 3 year old, "It's not a dinosaur, its an Archaeopteryx!" Ironically, real paleontologist debate whether birds are dinosaurs.