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Outside of natural history museums you're mostly going to find paleontologists at work in universities and at fossil sites. There isn't much for someone to do watching a researcher work on a fossil at a university. As someone who does it every day...it's mostly working on computers. Some sites do public digs. However, he's very young to be able to gain access to sites, so it depends on their proximity to areas open to the public.

I don't know the area very well, but there are a few sites that are fairly well known. Have you heard of Sharktooth Hill? They have public digs. I think that would be something he'd have to do in a few years. When I did work at fossil digs that were open to the public there were minimum ages for liability and insurance purposes. It also looks like they allow volunteers in the prep lab, so that's something to keep in mind.

The Page Museum (at La Brea) has a fishbowl lab where people are preparing fossils. Outside in Hancock Park are the tar pits themselves. These are places you're probably familiar with.

You have a few age-appropriate options:

• You mention local museums (and you have a bunch, which is really cool). Have you just been visiting or have you looked into all of the events that go on? You could join a museum you guys love and participate in the special programs. A lot of these museums have great summer programs that go beyond just visiting the exhibits. They often have special events for National Fossil Day and Darwin day that are really fun, or movie nights where they'll discuss the science of the movie. I did events like that alongside curators and other researchers, so they can definitely be opportunities for interactions. He's getting to be the age where these programs are perfect, and I really think they're your best bet. There are often guest talks as well if he can sit through something like that. The Page Museum even says:
  
  > Mark your calendars for October 12 and come to the Page Museum! We will be celebrating fossils found right here at the La Brea Tar Pits as well as specimens collected by NHM scientists across the globe. This is your chance to get up close to real fossils, talk with our scientists, and become amazed by the variety of fossil discoveries to date. The event is Free and open to the public.
  
  
• Get him outside so he can see geology in action, even if they're not fossil digs. This site has recommendations for paleo stuff in Southern California. Anza Borrego looks like a great place to go. Look into some paleontology and geology books for kids (like this, this, and this) and tie them to the what you see outside. This is more about the process of observing and learning about the world. It's about seeking to explain things. He's probably extremely curious and inquisitive and would do well with things like this. Other state parks or public lands in the region may have trails and visitors centers. You're definitely in an area where there are fossils!

Not sure the discipline of paleontology is really geared to answer that question... [EDIT] Most fossils I've tasted are tough, a bit salty and frankly too gritty to be on my foodie shortlist.

There's a few factors that goes into meat flavour and texture:

• Fast twitch vs slow twitch muscles determines how 'red' meat is - that is how much myoglobin it has. Birds that fly a lot have red breast meat when compared to birds that fly only in emergencies. For example, compare the breasts of pigeon (red) and chicken (white). This also works with fish: continuously fast moving fish meat tends to red, meaty flavours (eg tuna) vs most fish that have basically white flesh, but have a red triangle of muscle along the dorsal line like hamachi. Ambush hunters like the crocodile are immobile almost all the time, so their meat is more like chicken breast.
  
• Muscles that are continuously exercised are loaded with connective tissue and are tough. Muscles rarely exercised are tender. Compare shin, shank and shoulder cuts (tough) with fillet steak (tender).
  
• Cooking technique - fast and hot vs slow and cool(er). Tender cuts can be cooked hot and fast (grill, fry) and be excellent as long as the internal temperature stays below the mid 60s (°C) otherwise you are in well-done territory [EDIT] and that is the 'stringy' texture in OPs question. Tough cuts should be cooked for a long time to break connective fibres to gelatine making the meat juicy and soft. For tough cuts, temperature can go up into the 70s without necessarily making the meat dry. Think southern BBQ and sous vide ribs. Tender cuts are typically less flavourful/meaty than tough cuts. Chicken thighs need cooking longer than chicken breast, so getting a perfect roast chicken, with moist breast and tender thighs is hard.
  
• Impact of diet. What the animal eats can influence flavour heavily. Corn-fed and grass-fed cattle taste different, with grass-fed being a stronger, meatier taste. Free-range chickens are gamier than factory birds. Water fowl and crocodile tastes a bit 'fishy'. Pigeon and quail more gamey. Traditionally, pheasants and other birds were left to 'hang' (with guts in) in a cool but not refrigerated environment until the meat 'matures' and the tail feather fall out. This fermentation is the main reason for really gamey taste. Personally, I hate it and feel there are too many 'off' flavours. [EDIT] the really fishy smell of not-quite-fresh fish is TMA, caused by the (I think, bacterial) breakdown of proteins in the fish. I am not referring to this off-flavour when I mean fishy.
  
• Seasonality: Animals in areas with cold winters tend to lay down fat in autumn to help the animal survive to spring. There's a strong preference to eating those animals in autumn when the fat content (and thus flavour) is the highest. Higher fat content allows more cooking techniques to be used, and allows the meat to be cooked hotter while remaining moist and tender. Hunting seasons are mostly in the autumn.
  
  So, with Leaellynasaurus, we essentially have a wild turkey-like animal in a highly seasonal environment, eating plants in a non-aquatic environment. Hunt them near polar winter to maximise their yummy fat.
  
  As non-farmed animal, its major muscle groups on its rear legs got a huge workout - its legs would be best for braising and stewing and would be rich, meaty and a bit gamey. Its shoulders and forelimbs a lot less, and so would be more chicken-breast-like, but smaller in proportion. Some small, fried pieces like the Japaneae karaage might be nice.
  
  [EDIT] On reflection, the tail might produce both the greatest challenge when cooking Leaellynasaurus, but also the greatest opportunity. The tail - one of the largest dinosaur tails relative to body size - is full of connective tissue, making poorly cooked tail as chewy as tough jerky and less palatable. However, cooked 48-72 hours at 75°C sous vide, it would be like the best ox-tail stew - juicy, tender and incredibly rich in flavour. It could take some really strong herbs and spices to really up the richness into the stratosphere.
  
  This is just my best guess as a cook who's read the excellent On Food and Cooking. I'd say, give Leaellynasaura meat a try if you can, although finding a restaurant for such a delicacy is pretty hard these days.

I can't help much with the space stuff, but my son was a complete dinosaur geek from the time he was three. In third grade, his absolute favorite dinosaur books were the series "Introducing Dinosaurs", published by Child's World, most of which was written by Janet Riehecky. They're out of print and were expensive, but since I had most of them memorized by the time he was in third grade, it proves that we got our money's worth. You may be able to find them used on Amazon. The series has apparently been updated (a lot of information has changed in the last 20 years, like the whole feathers thing) and continued, and is now available in ebook format. Every book included the pronunciation for any dinosaur name, which I found really helpful.

(My son, who just graduated from college in December, is moving across the country next week for his first real job. This afternoon he told me that he was leaving that set of books in my care. He threatened to abandon me in the worst nursing home he could find if I dared to get rid of them. I won't! I promise!)

Dougal Dixon's books are always a good choice, and paleontologist Jack Horner has published several children's books about his excavations. His biography, written by another great kids' dinosaur author Don Lessem, is for elementary-age kids and really inspirational - Horner was dyslexic and never went to college, yet he's the guy who Michael Crichton modeled the Jurassic Park paleontologist after.

My son also loved the fictional world of Dinotopia. In addition to four gorgeous picture books with fantastic illustrations by James Gurney, there are elementary-level chapter books about Dinotopia and several suitable for middle schoolers that were written by Alan Dean Foster.

(As it turns out, my son's mom is also a dino geek.)

I don't know how much literature there is of gorgon behavior, but Peter D. Ward is a well known authority on them and I'm sure he would be a good place to start for finding other references.

You should read his book: https://www.amazon.com/Gorgon-Paleontology-Obsession-Greatest-Catastrophe/dp/0670030945

He's a great writer and engaging without being too simplistic.

Good luck! Gorgonopsids are the shit.

Honestly, modern diversity is pretty good and you ought to get your head around how modern animals work before going into the fossil organisms where a lot of the anatomy is pretty speculative. I can speak to vertebrate morphology much better than invertebrate morphology, so my recommendations will focus on that.

1. A good dissection guide would help a lot. Personally, I like the De Iuliis & Pulera guide. It's well-illustrated and pretty generally clear.
   
   
2. Second thing you need is some reference material on biomechanics and general vertebrate morphology. There are a lot of vertebrate morphology textbooks out there, the Bemis text is probably fine for your purposes. A more specialized text on functional morphology (e.g. this one) would probably help a lot as well.
   
   
3. For fossil stuff, the best textbook surveying fossil morphology of vertebrates is probably the Carroll text, but it is incomplete for a lot of taxa. I really like the Gregory text on fish skulls, for example, which may fill in some of the gaps that Carroll leaves out.
   
   Finally, Stuart Sumida is a vertebrate paleontologist and functional morphologist who periodically consults with Disney and other major animation studios on animal & human locomotion. He's part of the reason there's a sea-change in animal (and human) animation quality in Disney films from Lion King onwards. He's got a bunch of animation resources here and periodically offers workshops for animators. His slides are mostly pretty text-sparse but there may be something of use in there.

I actually just searched for this sub with this exact question in mind! However I was thinking of something that introduced species chronologically, (i.e. starts with the messy buggers in the pre-cambrian, and works it's way through as much as we know).

Basically sparked by reading up on saber-toothed cats and finding out they're not actually Felidae, and I realised that while I absolutely love reading about pre-historic life, I really don't have much basis in knowing fully the various branches of life that have existed. Convergent evolution is amazing to read about, but so is evolution itself!

Just wish-listed these three books (1, 2, 3) on amazon, wondering if anyone could recommend if any of those might be what I'm looking for in terms of prehistoric life overall (and not just dinosaurs, though dinosaurs are obviously super cool too) but also possibly recommend any, as I know these are very broad overview encyclopedia's with pretty pictures. Don't mind detail and complexity, but not that interested in the process of excavations and such as it relates to palaeontology.

This book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375824197?ie=UTF8&tag=laelaps-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0375824197

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The author, Tom Holtz, is honestly one of the most enthusiastic people in the field and this is a book that can grow with your son.

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142411930?ie=UTF8&tag=laelaps-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0142411930

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This one is aimed at slightly younger audiences (squarely at the 8 year old demographic, actually) and is full of the sorts of facts and stuff that kids love to trot out when talking to grownups.

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Another thing I would recommend is, before you go to the museum, try get in touch with the curators or somebody in charge of outreach programs. We're all busy people but most of us are willing to take a moment out of our day to show a kid around behind the scenes, and if there's an active docent program at the museum you can also get a special tour of front of house stuff too.

I have a copy of Greg Paul's The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (2010) and I like it quite a bit.. Reasonably up-to-date, lovely art, a diverse selection of dinosaurs... The only one of your criteria it doesn't meet is #4. It's a pretty bulky book.

There's a good book by Ian M. Lange, called "Ice Age Mammals of North America: A guide to the Big, the Hairy, and the Bizarre."

It's short and written for a general audience so it's easy to follow. It has a nice overview of the animals, geology, and possible extinction causes of the time period. Let me know if you're looking for something more advanced, and I'll see what I can dig up.

I'm not sure if it's the most comprehensive, but The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs is really good.

There is a great children's book about her: https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Girl-Bone-Story-Anning/dp/1845077008

I am out in the field digging several times a week. I have found these pants to be extremely durable for some rough conditions I dig in, they are teflon infused which helps with water resistance and stains, they are rip stop and can hold up well to thorns, rocks, barb wire fencing. They are light weight and have tons of cargo pockets and, a must for me, zippered pockets. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VTJYYRV/ref=twister_B06VTBPWPJ

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I second the danner mountain lite boots

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These are pricey, but I own them, and won't own another pair, whats his life worth? hiking gaiters are not for snake protection, https://www.amazon.com/TurtleSkin-SnakeArmor-Reversible-Snake-Gaiters/dp/B000BK3EBQ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=30B5BOSVHGPNZ&keywords=turtleskin+gaiters&qid=1562990100&s=sporting-goods&sprefix=turtle+skins%2Csporting%2C156&sr=1-1-spons&psc=1