The Texas Science & Natural History Museum welcomed at least 200 community members to “Día de los Huesos” on Saturday, an event which celebrated Día de los Muertos with a paleontological spin.

The museum’s education staff coordinated and hosted the roughly five-hour celebration, which included a performance by UT’s Mariachi, bone and fossil identification, face painting and hands-on crafting experiences like creating marigold flowers out of tissue paper. Education coordinator Mariam Nouri said the staff aimed to connect every part of the museum to the day’s events. 

“Our hopes are to engage the visitors and make sure they’re having a fun day and learning,” Nouri said. 

For many families, the day served as a way to both honor their passed loved ones and explain Día de los Muertos to their young children. For Andrea Austin, a mother who attended with her three-year-old son, the connection was ideal.

“My son is kind of understanding death for the first time … and so we’ve had a really good time this year talking about our loved ones,” Austin said. “We just had to jump at the chance to do it.”

Another key part of the day was the paleontology department’s bone identification, which invited families to bring bones or fossils they found. Pamela Owen, associate director of the museum, said they wanted to help kids think about their ancestors in a new, engaging way. 

“It’s a way of doing a paleontological spin on Día de los Muertos,” Owen said. “When we think about living things, we (realize we) share common ancestors, so we decided to embrace that in this new event.” 

Ashley Simmel, museum event associate, said she was pleased by the positive response. 

“We would have been happy with anything, but this is pretty perfect,” Simmel said.