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@cgrant @smoran @vperez @llundgren @jbloch
I’m interested in developing a two-part “place-based” K-5 lesson plan on fossils focused on the Santa Cruz, California region. This would follow up on the general K-5 lesson that Sean led, which will soon be published in Science & Children.
Sean and I plan to do a pilot field trip on Saturday, 24 October. Claudia, I’m wondering if you could let people know about this via social media, and /or Lisa?
Our goal is to do a trial run and see what fossils are most common, and then to develop a study set of about 10 fossils.
Lesson 1. Would be the in-class ID of the fossils. I’m thinking of mostly inverts (bivalves, gastropods), but some sharks teeth and marine mammal bones. Sean we should try to collect the marine mammal bones on 24th October, so please bring a hammer, chisel, etc. I will do the same.
Once we understand what fossils we need to add from the inverts, I’m hoping we can ask Roger, or others to help provide these materials.
Lesson 2 would be the field trip, where students get to see the fossils in the field.
More later, Bruce
The site is still having some navigation issues, and when you replied about this forum topic, for some reason it did not come back here.
In order to continue the forum thread, I’m cutting and pasting the following:
“I know that Robert Boessenecker has done a fair bit of collecting (and published research) on marine mammals from the Purisima Fm. He might be a great resource for localities/teaching? I seem to remember some of those fossils are cataloged at the UCMP? Might make for interesting 3D scanning opportunities for lesson plan?
Boessenecker, R.W., Perry, F.A., and Schmitt, J.G. 2014. Comparative taphonomy, taphofacies, and bonebeds of the Mio-Pliocene Purisima Formation, central California: strong physical control on marine vertebrate preservation in shallow marine settings. PLOS One 9:3:e91419.
Racicot, R.A., Demere, T.A., Beatty, B.L., and R.W. Boessenecker. 2014. Unique feeding morphology in a new prognathous extinct porpoise from the Pliocene of California. Current Biology 24:1-6.
Boessenecker, R.W. 2013. A new marine vertebrate assemblage from the Late Neogene Purisima Formation in Central California, Part II: Pinnipeds and Cetaceans. Geodiversitas 35:4:815-940.
Etc.
I am jealous of your October plans for fossil hunting in California!!”We are having problems about forum responses coming back into the forum, so I’m having to cut and paste–as follows–to move your comment into the thread:
“Do you want me to post about this before the field trip to encourage people to come or would you like me to post a follow-up post (or both?)
If you want a post encouraging people to come, can you provide me a little more info–like the location of the field trip? I can make something to encourage participation but I want to make sure I have all the details! 🙂
If you want a follow up post, would it be possible for someone (@smoran?) to provide some photos of the event? Preferably with the kids’ backs. If we have photos of their faces, we’d want to get parental permission to use the photos. Thanks! Looking forward to creating this.”I am uploading a copy of the flyer for the Capitola trip. I hope we get a good turnout.
I’m excited to develop a local “place-based” activity, which I now see as a 3 part lesson–
1. Fossil ID in the classroom (new set of local fossils)
2. Class field trip to Capitola
3. Students go back into class and ID their own collections that they make from Capitola.Bruce
It is a spectacular SC day today, and I am excited about this afternoon’s field trip to Capitola. I will send photos, and hope that a few can be uploaded here as well.
I’m hoping the field trip sets up the design for the fossil collections to be used in lesson plans. In addition to the inverts, I also would like to have a few species of shark teeth in the study set. Victor, we may need to populate these from other places where the same Pliocene fossil species are found.
There is a lot of buzz about the trip, the activity, and the lesson plan.
More later, Bruce
@cgrant @smoran @vperez
The field trip was a great success. We had about 15-20 people of all ages. Panama alums included Chris Carlson, Laura Beach (and her mom!), Gail Alaimo, and Gary and Katy Bloom. I will upload other photos as they come in, but here is a good one of me and Erin’s husband Mel. Their daughter found a whale vertebrae. Lots of fossils in the rocks, although they were not easy to extract.I’d still like to develop a lesson for 3rd & 4th graders following up on a similar fossil ID kit that we have tested in FL and CA. I need to figure out how we can develop 6 identical kits of fossils, containing clams (bivalves), gastropods, whale bones, and rare forms like echinoderms and sharks teeth. It is unrealistic to think we can extract these fossils from the fallen blocks easily, so I’m hoping to put together these kits from existing resources. The common and rare fossils from Capitola are nicely described in the Perry 1993 report.
I am uploading (with her permission) a message from Laura Arnow that she sent to me after the trip yesterday:
________________________________________
From: Arnow, Laura
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2015 1:22 PM
To: MacFadden,Bruce J
Subject: fossils and NGSSHi, Bruce,
Yesterday was super fun! I posted a few pics and got a reply from an old Peace Corps friend who’d seen one of your papers as he was reviewing literature relevant to the Baudo Pathway.
Anyway… not sure if you have messed around with the new national science standards at all but here are the relevant ones in grades 3 and 4:
Grade 3: largely focuses on the diversity and distribution of fossils, and is meant I think to shatter the common second grade T.Rex-groupie misconception that fossils are just remains of dinosaurs from swamps:
http://www.nextgenscience.org/3-ls4-1-biological-evolution-unity-and-diversityGrade 4: moves from understanding that the fossil record represents the diversity of life long ago to beginning to organize a continuum of time using very basic concepts of stratigraphy (as in above is newer below is older—the assessment boundary stops at relative ages and major fossil types):
http://www.nextgenscience.org/4ess1-earth-place-universeIf the Next Gen is old hat to you, forgive me. If not let me know as I’ve tangled with it over the years and find it fascinating and well worth using in developing curriculum.
Hi Laura–I just saw that you signed up! Excellent. I hope that you will feel welcome contributing to these forums as you are so inclined.
Exploratory field trip at Capitola Beach
Photos by @smoran
Exploratory field trip at Capitola Beach PART II
Photos by @smoran
@bmacfadden Regarding kits for classroom use:
If you have a selection of good quality fossils, we can 3D scan them, or CT scan them. Then, we can add laminated cards to the kit with high resolution images. This way students have the 3D dimensional component, that includes texture and the 2D component with visuals and realistic rendering.
Interesting idea once we have developed a kit of the fossils themselves.
Thanks for uploading the photos above. They look great!
I’m hoping that Lisa will send a few out by Facebook to the myFOSSIL audience.
Thanks! Bruce
@bmacfadden yes! I’d love to create a social media post for this. I’ve got a lot lined up with your great turn out for the field trip and @rleder’s great trip up to New York. I’ll create the posts and schedule them for this week. I’m thinking the whale vert pictures will be great for #WhaleWednesday!
I noticed looking through the images that many of the fallen blocks have lenses of molluscs. I think a good field activity/lesson could be to have students try to reorient the block. In other words, determine which side is right side up. They could do this by looking at shell orientation and by relating to the in situ cliff stratigraphy. This could be tied into the 4th grade standard that addresses stratigraphy and the law of superposition.
Also, it would be interesting to compare and contrast with the East Coast. The Calvert Cliffs would be ideal because the depositional environments are similar (despite the age difference). This would relate to the 3rd grade standard that addresses fossil distribution.
I’m happy to help with putting together the fossil kits in any way that I can. If you do choose to use the Calvert Cliffs as an analog, I can also help get fossils from there to add to the kits.
@bmacfadden, it’s weird because I got your reply to this thread in an email update, but it is not appearing on the forum. I wonder if there’s a bug? I’ll usersnap this to show what I mean.
Anyway, a person (Bobby Boessenecker) from Twitter responded when I posted about the trip writing “whoa, didn’t realize any other vert paleos cared about Capitola… much of my M.S. thesis based on this locality ” The link to his tweet is here: https://twitter.com/CoastalPaleo/status/657755835544702976
I wonder if he has any resources that we could tap into for this project!
Victor—Could you be thinking about assembling a set (6 each) of fossil shark teeth of the kind that someone could find at Capitola? This would include Meg and one other taxon (re: what Sean has collected).
Sean—what color are the sharks teeth from Capitola? If possible it would be good to use similar color teeth in the study set.–Bruce
@cgrant @vperez @smoran @llundgren
I am very excited. Yesterday I picked up a private collection of Capitola fossils donated to us for K-12 outreach purposes. It has many of the common taxa that I would like to have represented in the K-5 fossil study kits. Once we add the shark teeth (Victor) and whale bone fragments (Sean) we should be close.
It also happens to be a truly spectacular day today and low tide is at abut 5:40 this afternoon. I have a meeting at the local SC Natural History Museum this afternoon, and then I am going to take a walk on Capitola. Sean–I’m going to look for the layer with the fossil crabs. The donation has 2, and I need 4 more for the study sets, unless you have some as well.
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