The Fossils baMEL

The Models

Model A: When people interpret fossils, they often make mistakes. It is misleading to make conclusions about how Earth's surface has changed from fossils.
Model B: Many organisms' fossils are missing from the fossil record. We cannot make any conclusions about Earth's past environments from fossils.
Model C: Fossils provide evidence for Earth's changing surface. Understanding past life forms tells us about past environments.

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Student Handouts

• Fossils baMEL Model Plausibility Ratings (Acrobat (PDF) 166kB Jul10 25)
• Fossils baMEL – Model Cards (Acrobat (PDF) 112kB Jul7 24)
• Fossils baMEL – Large Model Cards (Acrobat (PDF) 129kB Jul7 24)
• baMEL – Diagram (Acrobat (PDF) 183kB Jun26 25)
• Explanation Task (Acrobat (PDF) 52kB May6 24)

Lines of Evidence

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Evidence #2. Leaf margin analysis at Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. Credit: Wright Seneres based on Smithsonian (2009).

Provenance: Science Learning Research Group, University of Maryland
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

Evidence #1: Trilobites were small animals that lived at the bottom of the ocean. They fed on organic matter in sediment on the ocean floor. Because trilobite fossils are so abundant and well preserved in the limestone and shale rock of Ohio, they were officially named the state fossil.
Evidence #2: Leaf fossils from Wyoming found in a deep rock layer show a climate that is cooler than that of the fossils found above it.
Evidence #3: The Svalbard forest in Arctic Norway is filled with fossils of tropical trees, called Lycopsid. These trees lived hundreds of millions of years ago.
Evidence #4: Mesosaurus is an ancient, large, lizard-like creature. These fossils have only been found in two places on Earth, the southern tip of Africa and eastern South America.
Evidence #5: Fossils of coral reefs have been found in deep water off the coast of Texas. Coral reefs require sunlight to form. Sunlight cannot reach deep water. These coral reefs are about 19,000 years old.
Evidence #6: North Dakota is in a temperate grassland biome. Fossils found in the Hell Creek rock formation include pollen from ground ferns and palm trees, which grow in a tropical ecosystem.
Evidence #7: Many large geographic areas, like the Blue Ridge and Piedmont regions in Georgia, are made up of metamorphic and igneous rock. Fossils are not usually found in these types of rock.
Evidence #8: Hallucigenia is a fossil that was first discovered in the 1970's. Recent discoveries show that scientists pictured this organism upside down and backwards for years.

Student Handouts

• Fossils baMEL – Evidence Cards (Acrobat (PDF) 32kB Jul7 24)
• Fossils baMEL – Large Evidence Cards (Acrobat (PDF) 32kB Jul7 24)
• Fossils baMEL – Evidence Texts Color (Acrobat (PDF) 3.8MB Jul7 24)
• Fossils baMEL – Evidence Texts BW (Acrobat (PDF) 2.6MB Jul7 24)

Virtual baMEL

The Google Drive folder below contains MEL resource documents in the Google formats. In order to maximize the flexibility of our activities, the MEL Project Team wanted to make more resources compatible with virtual settings. We have made our MEL scaffolds available in Google formats, so that they can be copied, modified, and uploaded more easily on a variety of platforms and devices. Please note that to access all the materials for each MEL scaffold, you will need a Google account. View the README file first.

• README First Instructions & FAQ (Acrobat (PDF) 70kB May24 21)
• Virtual Fossils baMEL Resource Documents in Google Drive