A keen-eyed kid paleontologist

In one sense this is a great story, in another sense its worry-making. This 4 year old kid has been in the newspaper! She's famous! And we all know that her peers in school will be jealous and will start teasing her mercilessly about it.

Well...maybe not her current peers - other 4 year olds might not know anything. But when she gets older and her peers get older, and if some misguided parent says something about her being in a newspaper article - I fear the vultures will attack and try to cut her down to size.

From the Ottawa Citizen: A keen-eyed kid paleontologist
Don't go telling Stella Hatton that a plastic toy is a triceratops unless you get the horns right.

The four-year-old from Chelsea has a sharp eye and a love of dinosaurs. And her devastating critique of a sloppy model triceratops, found on YouTube, has brought her special attention from the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Stella's mother, Sarah Hatton, tells it this way.

Back in December, Stella was in a toy store with Sarah's partner, Peter Laporte.

"She was pointing up to these dinosaur model kits, because of course that's what she wants, and saying, 'I want the styracosaurus,' " her mother said.

All the boxes were labelled "triceratops." Laporte took one and handed it over.

"As soon as she started to point out the flaws he thought, 'Oooohh, this might be different,' " Sarah said. He grabbed his camera. The resulting video shows Stella cheerfully enumerating the major flaws in what's supposed to be a triceratops, but clearly isn't. The horn on the nose is too big; the horns over the eyes have been reduced to small bumps, and the frill - the big, bony plate behind the head - is a mess, too. Only the beak (mouth area) is right.

Stella insisted the whole thing still looked like a styracosaurus.

And when her mother put the video on Facebook for friends to enjoy, staff at the Museum of Nature noticed it. They kindly sent Stella a correct triceratops model, the buildit-yourself kind, along with some dinosaur books and trading cards.

"That was really charming, that they would still attend to just one kid out of all the kids they see every day," her mother said.

Sarah Hatton is a professional artist. She also paints the occasional landscape background for what she calls the "prehistoric soap operas" at home. (A recent diorama took 30 minutes for the paint to dry, as Stella wailed: "The herbivores are staaaarrrrviing!")

Her daughter has always been interested in nature because the family spends a lot of time exploring the Gatineau Hills. But about six months ago Sarah starting noticing that Stella had absorbed a surprising amount of knowledge from dinosaur books even though she can't read them. For instance, she can classify dinosaurs by skull type.

"So I thought oh, this is by observation alone. It's an eye for detail. I think that's how the video happened."

Stella's books were once her mother's, suggesting that these things may run deep.

"The biggest problem I have now is that she has kind of picked every dinosaur model there is in the stores, but she's interested in these really obscure ones," Sarah said.

"She comes to me with sad eyes and says 'Mummy I don't have a hesperornis!' "