Paintbrush-toting Simmons Elementary School second-graders swept through sandboxes Thursday morning in search of remnants from creatures that walked the earth some 65 million years ago.

Dinosaurs.

And, with each recovery of a skull, piece of a leg bone and more, their excitement turned to wide-eyed awe at the "discovery" in their hands.

Culminating their studies on dinosaurs and fossils, the students got a first-hand look at how the extinct reptiles lived from field paleontologists Mike and Roberta Straka during a morning assembly and a subsequent dig. Roberta took time burying the fossils in each group's sandbox to ensure kids would be able to find a piece of history.

"We do a lot of glueing," she said of her technique for keeping fossils that are so old intact.