NEWPORT BEACH : Kids Like Fossils--You Dig?

For the last year or so, the people at the Environmental Nature Center have been collecting rocks. And not just any rocks--preferably ones that have been around for 100 million years or more.

They have found enough of them to set up a new study program for day-camp children: a fossil trail. Sort of a combination classroom and nature walk, the geology program debuted Wednesday when 72 children got a chance to try their hands as archeologists.

The children, mostly between the ages of 6 and 10, learned how fossils are created, what kinds of tools are necessary for the digs, and how the “professionals” excavate and chart their findings.

“See, I got this,” 7-year-old Jameson York said, exhibiting a small stone with a twisted shell imprint in one hand and holding a hammer and chisel in another. “I found it sticking part way out of the rock, and I chipped it out to the side.”

His teacher seemed impressed. “Look at that, we’ve got another little paleontologist,” Beverley Barnes said.

Given the interest among children in dinosaurs and fossils, Nature Center director Debra Clarke said, the fossil project was a natural choice. And once the word got out, people throughout the school district volunteered to donate their personal finds.

“We had one piece of petrified wood that was collected out near Yuma, just after World War II,” Clarke said. “A warehouse worker heard that we were looking for fossils and he had found it when he was stationed out there after the war.”

The Environmental Nature Center, a 2 1/2-acre park which stretches between 15th and 16th streets in Newport Beach, was founded 16 years ago by teachers at Newport Harbor High School as a way to use the otherwise vacant easement property.

The dozen or so plant communities that now thrive in the area were planted by high school students at nearby Newport Harbor High during their study hall sessions and lunch breaks.

While the day camp is open only in the summer, the center is open throughout the year for field trips, science and research projects and the starting point for any number of Scout badges.

“It really means a lot, especially to the ones from the poorer parts of town,” Clarke said, pointing to the trails. “For a lot of them, just going for a walk is a thrill.”