Saskatoon, SK – PotashCorp returns to the Saskatchewan Children's Festival with the ever popular PotashCorp Fossil Find attraction from June 4-7, 2008.
Hosting more than 5,000 children, the PotashCorp Fossil Find is a unique opportunity for children to sift through pre-history and learn about phosphate mining. Hidden in excavated earth from PCS Phosphate Aurora, North Carolina are ancient treasures such as coral, shells and shark teeth.
The bones of sea life are highly concentrated in phosphorus. More than 20 million years ago the earth was covered in water. When the water retreated, the bones were buried beneath tons of sandy soil; the bones reacted with the soil to form a phosphate mineral – PotashCorp mines this mineral to make a form of phosphate used in fertilizer.
However, some of this sea life material is so dense it resists reacting with soil to form phosphate. These fossil "treasures" are hidden amid the excavated earth at PotashCorp Fossil Find.
Children can keep the fossils they find and view displays of larger fossils such as whale vertebrae and shark teeth. PotashCorp employees are volunteering their time to help identify fossils, provide information about phosphate mining, and answer any other further questions visitors might have.
"The kids seem to really enjoy themselves at PotashCorp Fossil Find," says Rhonda Speiss, Manager of Public Relations at PotashCorp. "We're getting more and more young treasure hunters each year at the children's festival. The PotashCorp Fossil Find is a great combination of hands-on learning and fun."
PotashCorp's popular fossil find tent is situated on a new site this year, directly east of the Vimy Memorial. The fossil hunt operates from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Wednesday to Friday and 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Saturday, the final day of the festival.
Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc. is the world's largest fertilizer enterprise producing the three primary plant nutrients and a leading supplier to three distinct market categories: agriculture, with the largest capacity in the world in potash, second largest in nitrogen and third largest in phosphate; animal nutrition, with the world's largest capacity in phosphate feed ingredients; and industrial chemicals, as the largest global producer of industrial nitrogen products and the world's largest capacity for production of purified industrial phosphoric acid.
