'Age of Mastodon': N.S. woman visits museum exhibit featuring fossil she helped unearth as a child

As a child, Kristina Bushell and her brother Matthew tagged along with their paleontologist aunt to help with a mastodon dig in Milford, N.S.

With a metal pail, hard hats, and goggles, seven-year-old Bushell dug into the earth searching for 80,000-year-old artifacts.

She unearthed a piece of a turtle shell, while her brother found a bone fragment.

Those discoveries are now part of the “Age of Mastodon” exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax.

Three decades later, Bushell is reliving the experience by sharing her fossil find and memories with her children.

"I think it's pretty cool. It's super big and it looks pretty cool," says her son Felix Bushell.

Jeff Gray, the manager of the Museum of Natural History, is delighted another generation of Bushell’s family is able to share in the experience.

“The fact that she was coming with her family and was able to share her experiences with her children through an exhibit here at the museum, it’s wonderful to be a part of people’s lives in a real and tangible way,” said Gray.

Bushell says she wouldn't have been able to experience the dig, and exhibit, if it weren't for her aunt, who was one of the lead paleontologists on the site 30 years ago.

"She kind of paved the way for women in science and to be able to bring my kids in and be a part of that too, it kind of just brings a full circle," says Bushell.