This activity is designed for large freshman courses (>200 students) and is used in-class. The activity requires a short (15 minute) overview of Earth history before students have the opportunity to work through various questions and problems. Tasks include simple math problems, critical thinking questions, and include place-based examples of geological situations for Arizona and California.

Students completing the activity will have knowledge of Earth history, knowledge of some geological disasters, and will have learned several different perspectives of timescales that affect various events on Earth.

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A classroom/lab activity using the Paleobiology Database to produce and interpret diversity curves for various groups of important and popular extinct animals, such as trilobites, ammonites, and dinosaurs. Activity helps students appreciate ancient life, geological time, and the important of mass extinctions in shaping the history of life, and by extension the implications of current extinctions.
Outcomes:

Research how extinct animals lived, what they looked like, when they lived, and when they went extinct.
Observe the geological timescale, name three geological eras, and use them to understand geological time.
Name five major mass extinctions and relate them to the eras in which they occurred.
Use the Paleobiology Database to produce diversity curves for an important group of extinct animals.
Interpret graphs of diversity curves to understand the importance of mass extinctions in the history of life.
(Optional) Communicate results of study to peers in class. In the process, synthesize information on multiple extinct animal groups to better appreciate the importance of extinctions in earth history.

In this activity, students work in groups to put a set of cartoon cards in order, much in the way that we might assemble a geologic history. The primary goal of the activity is to explore the nature of science in general and the nature of geoscience or historical science specifically, without requiring any content knowledge.

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This Web article is part of OLogy, where kids can collect virtual trading cards and create projects with them. Here they meet Deena Soris, who interviews the fossil of a Protoceratops. The more-than-20 questions answered by this dinosaur fossil include: You look fabulous. How old are you?How do scientists guess an extinct dinosaur's speed?Is it a thrill to have a frill?So what happened?One day you're happily munching away on thick, tough plants, the next you're history?How did you go from being a "Gobi sandwich" to becoming a fossil?Your bones were underground for 80 million years. How did the paleontologists find you?Once you got to the Museum, what happened? Are there any secrets you'd like to share with the folks at home?

Students learn about fossils what they are, how they are formed, and why scientists and engineers care about them.

Average inquiry level: Guided inquiry
This inquiry-based lab explores the fossil record by having students use various characteristics of fossils to devise a classification scheme and eventually apply the geologic time scale and geographic locations of the fossils. In Part 1, students are given household or classroom-based items to sort into groups for developing their own classification scheme. Part 2 repeats a similar path to a classification scheme of known fossils. In Part 3, the students take their knowledge of classifications schemes to infer the geologic time period and geographic extent of some fantastic prehistoric beasts of the fossil record.

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There are many localities throughout the world where waulsortian mounds have been identified. These mounds are believed to build up through faunal and carbonate mud deposition in areas outside the temperature/latitudinal/salinity realm of coral formation. Students will analyze the mounds to determine whether or not they believe the mounds are waulsortian and discuss possible depositional environments for the mounds in either case. After samples have been collected and described lithologically and faunally, the students will write a report on their findings and conclude with an answer to the question, "Are these waulsortian mounds?"

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This American Museum of Natural History press release, issued in April 2001, announces the discovery of a remarkably well-preserved, 130-million-year-old fossil dinosaur covered from head to tail with downy fluff and primitive feathers. The press release includes details about where the dinosaur was unearthed, and by whom, the significance of the finding, the geologic reasons why the area where this specimen was found has been a treasure trove of fossils and how dinosaurs are related to birds.

This fun Web site is part of OLogy, where kids can collect virtual trading cards and create projects with them. Here, they learn about the Fighting Dinos fossil. The site opens with a vivid account of the dinosaurs' fight. "Explore the Fighting Dinos Through a Paleontologist's Eyes" gives students an up-close look at the fossil, with notes about the clues it's given scientists. "How Did They Die, Anyway?" presents details about the three theories that have been developed about how the fighting pair was buried alive. "Bone Up Your Fossils" challenges students to match up eight dinosaur fossil photos and descriptions.

This OLogy activity serves as a kid-friendly how-to manual about searching for fossils. In Not Just Any Rock Will Do, kids learn that fossils "hide out" in sedimentary rock and see examples of shale and sandstone. Do's and Don'ts for Fossil Hunters gives kids practical tips and a list of fossil-hunting supplies. In Fossils You May Find, there are photos of common invertebrate, vertebrate, and plant fossils to guide kids. Paleontology Clubs and Web Sites lists resources to help kids determine where to hunt for fossils. In Keeping a Field Journal, kids are shown an sample journal entry that points out the types of information they should record.

In this classroom activity, middle school students simulate a "dinosaur dig." The activity opens with background information for teachers about fossils. Working in groups, students excavate fossil sites created in advance by the teacher, or other group of students, and try to reconstruct a chicken skeleton. The activity closes with a two-page student worksheet that directs students to diagram the fossil site and includes probing questions to help them decode their findings.

To understand how fossils are formed, students model the process of fossilization by making fossils using small toy figures and melted chocolate. They extend their knowledge to the many ways that engineers aid in the study of fossils, including the development of tools and technologies for determining the physical and chemical properties of fossilized organisms, and how those properties tell a story of our changing world.

The American Museum of Natural History is home to the world's largest collection of vertebrate fossils, totaling nearly one million specimens. This Web site offers visitors a virtual visit to the Museum's famed Fossil Halls. It features seven sections along with a brief introduction, a Teacher's Guide, and information about the Museum's Division of Paleontology.

This activity is a printable one-page PDF handout, which focuses on dinosaur features. It includes an album of animal fashions in which students compare three dinosaur's frills with similar features found on animals alive today in order to determine their function and a "design your own dinosaur" challenge in which students create a dinosaur that has the features they'd like to see.

After a short lecture, groups of students complete this Lecture Tutorial worksheet on the different
hypotheses of the function of Stegosaurus plates. The worksheet is designed so students examine
different lines of evidence, and they must choose the best interpretation(s).

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Students must associate different dinosaur trackways with their locations and the rock formations containing the trackways based on clues given from various points of view.

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Students are asked to match up several unique fossils with the site and location where it was found and it's geologic age.

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Students are asked to match up five top Museums with 2 fossils that they have on display based on clues presented from various points of view.

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Students are asked to match up each of the Stooges with their favorite group and species of dinosaur based on clues given from different perspectives.

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This lab serves to introduce students to geologic time and serves as an outline for the course through the semester.

Students use a tape register and must mark out the corresponding length of each Geologic Era and Eon towards the beginning of the course. Above Western time line Navajo students construct their own time line correlating events as best as possible. As the course progresses starting from 4.6bya each week they must draw major events that occur marking correct subdivisions of time and ages ago. As fossil life gets more complex such as beginning in the Paleozoic students are must take different categories of fossils or different periods so all are doing different things but working together. (Similarly the Navajo time line builds. This time line is taped around the room---and I would have liked to paint the two time lines along the corridor of the building but Maintenance axed it.

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