Touching the Past

In celebration of Earth Day 365, Lawford Anderson, CAS professor of Earth and environment, hosted the event, Touch the Past, where students could hold a shooting star, dinosaur bones, and more. At the event, Katherine Guo (CAS’27) (right) poses for a photo with a replica saber-toothed cat skull; Lisa Tornatore (CAS’02), director of BU Sustainability (left), snaps the picture, as Anderson (center) and Dorsa Mohammadi (CAS’27) look on. The original fossil, unearthed from the La Brea Tar Pits in the 1900s, was in Anderson’s office at the University of Southern California, before he donated it to a museum. When he left USC, his colleagues gifted him this replica, nicknamed “Smiley,” as a reference to the extinct cat’s genus, Smilodon. Photo by Cydney Scott