Observe how fossils can form

This website hosts an animation depicting how cast and mold fossils are preserved in the rock record. Users can play, rewind, fast forward and stop the animation at any point in the formation as well as read captions outlining the process. The animation is part of the Earth Exploration Visualization collection.

Why is the Land in South Louisiana Disappearing?

This USGS news press release describes how the combination of shoreline erosion, land subsidence, anthropogenic infuences, and sea level rise are resulting in the loss of land in South Louisiana. It also discusses the value of Louisiana's coastal wetlands in terms of oil and gas infrastructure, shipping, fisheries, hurricane protection, and waterfowl.

Climate TimeLine Information Tool

The Climate TimeLine (CTL) Information Tool summarizes climate history for time spans from 1 year to 100,000 years ago and beyond. The relation between human development, weather, and climate is explored. The CTL explains how past climate is measured, provides basic information on paleoclimatology, and explains the use of paleo proxies. There is a tutorial on drought and how to use the CTL to investigate that topic. There is also a climate glossary and links to climate and paleoclimate data.

Continental Drift

This web page is an animation showing the changing locations of the continents over the last 740 million years. You can click on the animation to get a paleontological history of any era (Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic or Precambrian). Additional information on the stratigraphy, ancient life, localities and tectonics for each era is provided.

American Field Guide: Relative Dating - Telling Time Using Fossils

This website integrates video footage and information with lesson plans and activities to teach students about the concept of relative dating. Students will graph a range chart for ammonites, determine the geologic age for several rocks, and determine which rocks will be most useful for oil companies looking to drill oil. This site contains lesson plans, student worksheets, discussion questions, and links for more information.

Ecopolis: Biofuels

This 3-minute video explains how algae, a biofuel, is being developed as an energy source. It also discusses disadvantages of current biofuels and how algae will overcome these disadvantages. The site also provides links to videos about related topics.

A Virtual Museum of Fossils

This collection of fossils contains 300 fossils of vertebrates and invertebrates and casts of fossils from national museums, universities and private collections. For each geologic time period, the website provides ancient world configurations, important ancient world physiographic features, ancient world locations where the fossils were found, and a comprehensive table with thumbnails of all fossils in the collection. A separate page is devoted to each specimen where multiple high resolution photographs are displayed. Reference skeletal reconstructions are shown where available from the literature.