Slicing Fossils
Tom Hickson, University of St. Thomas, and Ilyse Resnick, Temple University
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection
This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
- First Publication: May 19, 2015
- Reviewed: August 4, 2022 -- Reviewed by the On the Cutting Edge Activity Review Process
Summary
Spiky gastropod fossil. Photo by James E. Petts.
![[creative commons]](/images/creativecommons_16.png)
Provenance: Photo by James E. Petts. Available on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spiky_sea_shell_(11985840663).jpg
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.
In this exercise, students examine images of brachiopods, mollusks, and coquinas. They identify, visualize, and sketch slices through a variety of shelly organisms, then apply what they've learned to identify fossils in several samples of coquina.
Topics
Sedimentary Geology Grade Level
College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)
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Learning Goals
After successfully completing this exercise, students will be able to sketch slices through a few invertebrate fossils at a variety of angles, and will be able to recognize randomly oriented slices through these same fossils. They will be able to recognize a variety of fossils from fragments in fossiliferous rock samples.
Context for Use
This exercise is designed to help students make the leap from being able to recognize whole fossils to being able to recognize fossils from random 2D slices through them.
Description and Teaching Materials
Students work through a series of exercises, from multiple choice questions about slices through individual fossils to identifying fossils in samples of coquina.
Sliced fossils exercise (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 8.6MB May19 15)
Teaching Notes and Tips
This exercise was developed as part of a set of exercises to support 3D visualization skills. These exercises had an intended order. Instructors can pick and choose the exercises, but the order we intended was as follows:
- Introduction to 3D sketching
- Sketching block diagrams
- Sketching 3D Ripples and Dunes
- Slicing cylinders
- Slicing channels
- Slicing fruit
- Slicing rocks
- Slicing fossils
Assessment
I look over student answers to the questions to see how well they are able to identify the fossils on the final page of the exercise.
References and Resources
Using Gesture to Support Spatial Thinking highlights the value of gesture in communicating spatial information. It consists of two short exercises, and can be used in preparation for any other exercise in which students will be asked to use gesture to communicate spatial information.
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