Layer Cake Geology part of Activities
This activity visually introduces students to the idea of geologic time and the correlation between time, rock layers and fossils. It uses the familiar, relevant example of cake but teaches important concepts such ...

Paleoecology: An Evolutionary Arms Race part of Activities
In this activity, students divide into groups of 4-5, fine-tune a hypothesis relating to escalation, collect data to test this hypothesis using mollusks from local Yorktown deposits (Pliocene), analyze these data, ...

How do cladistics work? Generating phylogenetic trees using everyday objects. part of Activities
This lab activity is intended to introduce students to concepts of homology and evolutionary characters, and to help them understand how cladistic analyses are performed. The activity begins with generating a ...

Evolution in Your "Pet" Group part of Activities
This writing exercise asks students to use library resources to locate a peer-reviewed journal article that describes research on the evolution of their individual "pet" taxonomic group. After reading the ...

Creature Features - Showcase of Living Fossils part of Activities
This activity connects the fossil record to biodiversity in the Recent by having students present on a "living fossil" group. The exercise is useful in demonstrating evolutionary stasis, reminding ...

Macroevolution: Patterns and Processes of the Cambrian Metazoan Radiation part of Activities
Diversification patterns for clades belonging to the Cambrian Fauna (i.e., one of Sepkoski's Three Great Faunas) are generated and then used to test whether deterministic or random processes drove this ...

Paleobiology Database Activity for Historical Geology part of Activities
This laboratory exercise uses the Paleobiology Database to examine the relationships between continental position, sea-level and distribution of life through time.

Going to the Dogs: Exploring Allometry and Heterochrony part of Activities
This activity explores the relationship between developmental biology and macroevolution by focusing on how evolutionary changes in ontogeny can produce small-scale (within species) and large-scale (between species ...

Cladistics part of Activities
lab assignments intended to teach the basics of reading phylogenetic diagrams and parsimony optimization.

Functional Morphology: Philosophy and Methodology part of Activities
This is short thought exercise used to introduce the subject of functional morphology. Students are asked to use their intuition to generate hypotheses of functional morphology. Through this students recognize the ...

Niche Partitioning in Silurian Tabulate Corals part of Activities
In this group lab activity, students read a journal article, and then duplicate the article's measurements on a Silurian tabulate coral head. Students must evaluate their data in light of the journal ...

Devonian Transformation part of Activities
Students use the web to examine the biologic, geologic, atmospheric, and climatologically changes that occur with the evolution of land plants. This write up is a summary of web-based readings which the students ...

The Natural Selection Game part of Activities
This game simulates the effect of natural selection on two populations - a predator species and a prey species. The game was developed by Robert P. Gendron, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and I have modified ...

In-class Exercise: Sources of Variation in Populations part of Activities
Students identify sources of morphological variation (genetic, ontogenetic, sexual, and ecophenotypic differences) among the individuals of populations for three different species, one of which is colonial.

Evolution vs. Creationism Term Paper Assignment part of Activities
A term paper assigned for a Evolution vs. Creationism freshman seminar class. The purpose of this assignment is to allow students to critically evaluate one aspect of the Evolution vs. Creationism debate.

Unit 4: Impacts of Environmental Change on Organisms: Horses part of Changing Biosphere
In this unit, students will gain a deep-time perspective on how life evolves on a dynamic planet. They will use the Equidae (horse family) as a case study to examine the relationship among climate, biomes, and ...

SIGkit (Software for Introductory Geophysics toolkit) for modelling and visualization of data part of Geophysics:Workshop 07:Geophysics Activities
Predicting what geophysical data may look like and making basic inferences from data are critical learning outcomes of introductory geophysics courses whether they happen in a classroom or in a field setting. This ...

The Great Clade Race - Zombie Island Edition part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
This activity is a modification of the "Great Clade Race" (Goldsmith, 2003). This activity is great for helping students understand cladograms/phylogenies, but the original reinforces some problematic ...

Introduction to Evolution (Historical Geology) part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
This is a guided question note sheet with interactive elements linked within for an online course in Earth History or Historical Geology. NOVA evolution lab is one component, along with other introductory videos ...

Paleobiology: Evolution and Extinction part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
This activity introduces students to the impact of population size, population distribution, and environmental events on extinction processes.