This activity asks students to identify examples of types of fossils amongst the exhibits at the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York. Students will build on their understanding of the history of life, paleontology, taphonomy, ichnology, and paleoecology--especially reefs.

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Students attend a class fieldtrip where over five locations across Tennessee representing three different geological time periods (Ordovician, Devonian, and Cretaceous) are visited. The students are required to collect 20 different taxa (5 of which must be unique to each student) and then using the knowledge they have gained in labs identify their taxa to species level. They must make a powerpoint presentation summarizing the paleocological and paleoclimatological information gained about each locality through the collection of the fossil taxa. The activity helps familiarize students with the geology of Tennessee and field collection of fossils in addition to lab identification of fossils.

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Students pick, sort, box, and identify fossils (mostly mollusks but also bryozoa, arthropods, cnidaria, and annelids) from richly fossiliferous, clastic marine sediment, compile a faunal list,compare the fauna with modern taxa, and make evaluate a paleogeographic model for the taxa found.

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This activity is an invertebrate fossil review in the format of Jeopardy to provide a fun opportunity for students to prepare for their fossil practical.

Students describe an unknown vertebrate fossil (or fossils, if multiple specimens are necessary for identification). This exercise is the culmination of their lab studies in the morphology of the vertebrate skeleton and requires them to integrate their ability to describe the morphology with research into the literature on their assigned animal. Students also become familiar with presentation of research through writing a formal scientific paper in the style of a particular journal.

This study is introduced at the beginning of class, and runs throughout the quarter. Students are first given a paper describing a morphological phylogeny of modern moles. The first few weeks' labs teach the students basic phylogenetic methods and the aspects of skeletal morphology needed to understand the character descriptions. Students in groups of 2 or 3 are assigned a set of characters from a particular region of the skeleton (i.e. humerus, lower teeth, skull, etc.). Those groups are responsible for learning to distinguish those characters on a representative group of modern specimens (for which the character codings are already available in the paper they have) and then coding those characters for a number of fossil taxa. The fossils are either described in papers posted on the course website or are represented by specimens held in the instructor's research lab. Students are responsible for finding time to come in and work with the specimens. The next to last lab of the quarter is concerned with analyzing data within each group, for the class as a whole, for fossil taxa alone, and for fossil and modern taxa. Students then write up the results of their analyses for their term project due at the end of the quarter.

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I order a lot of shells (online from SeaShellCity.com) and the students make their own limestones. We put the shells in portland cement (in large square ziploc containers); let them harden for a week, then cut them on the rock saw.
I have done this in a few ways.

Simple way for 3D reasoning: have students make a predictive sketch of what their limestone will look like cut. Then grade the accuracy of their prediction (award a prize).

Elaborate way for 3D reasoning, taphonomy and paleoenvironmental reconstruction: I sometimes provide the class with a carbonate shelf facies model (with a slide show from my own research), and have them work in teams, select an environment (from a map provided), research what benthos might live in that environment, then order shells of the calcareous ones, break those shells if necessary, and finally build a rock from the shells + portland cement. It really teaches taphonomy (especially comparing who lives in the environment vs. who makes it into the fossil record). Often, I then have the teams swap their rocks, and cut and interpret another team's rock.

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A diverse collection of lower Cretaceous (Albian) fossils is featured on this site. Fossil photos, illustrations and information about each suborder are provided for an array of fossil groups. Specific fossil groups include Ammonoidea, Bivalvia, Cephalopoda, Cnidaria (Corals), Echinodermata, Fish, Foraminifera, Gastropoda, Ostracoda, and Scaphopoda. Short discussions of United Kingdom geology, Albian stratigraphy, geologic time and fossil imaging techniques are also included.

In this activity, students will explore what types of fossils have been found in their local area, where they were discovered, and how old they are, using the Paleobiology Database.

This activity is designed to be flexible and can be used as a lecture, lab, or homework activity. It is divided into four parts and can be modified by picking and choosing which parts (and which questions within parts) to include. It can also be modified by asking all of your students to choose the same town, collection, phyla, or species to focus on. The duration of the activity ranges from 10 minutes to two hours, depending on which parts are assigned.

Students can work as individuals or in pairs and class size can range from a small seminar (< 10 students) to a large lecture (> 100), as long as sufficient computer facilities are available.

Each student or student pair will need access to a laptop or desktop computer connected to the internet, running both Microsoft Word and an internet browser.

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For this actiivty the students will watch a Nova documentary called "The Four-Winged Dinosaur." The documentary follows two teams of scientists as they create replicas of microraptor, a dinosaur with four feathered wings, in an attempt to determine how flight evolved in birds (from the ground up or from the trees down). As the students watch the video, they should think about each hypothesis and pay attention to the lines of evidence presented on both sides of the argument. The students are given specific questions to answer while watching the video that will help them pay attention to key ideas. Outside of class they are responsible for writing a short essay (~1 page, typed) describing which origin of flight hypothesis that they believe is the most plausible and why. Students must support their argument with evidence presented in the video.

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This activity has students make small cuts in processed cheese food and then apply shear stress perpendicular or parallel to the cuts to see what sort of fracturing will occur.

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To prepare for the demonstration students are assigned homework problems dealing with brittle deformation in which they must plot Mohr diagrams and determine shear plane orientations and Coulomb coefficients. In class we examine an undeformed core of Yazoo clay (Eocene) taken from a test site on campus. The core is then uniaxially compressed using a hydraulic press. The students are then asked to observe and describe the development of shear fractures (including conjugate shear surfaces) and measure their orientations. In addition, they are asked to speculate on the development of extension fractures that develop during unloading. The fracture data are then used to estimate the Coulomb coefficient for the Yazoo clay sample and comparisons are made to values obtained from samples of differing lithologies. We wrap up with a class discussion summarizing observations from the fracture demonstration.

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If you are lucky enough to teach Petrology in a part of the world with a cold winter, freeze distillation of hard apple cider works well as a class demonstration when the cider is frozen overnight outside. The slow growth of ice forms fairly large crystals on top of the alcoholic liquid, as opposed to experiments done in a freezer where it is hard to separate ice and cider. The ice can be removed from the cider using a kitchen sieve, and the remaining hard apple cider has a beautiful amber color and a very strong smell of alcohol, so it is obvious to students what is going on chemically. The process can be discussed in terms of the ethanol-water eutectic phase diagram.

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This activity is an extension where students freeze a liquid, making ice cream.

Using the IRIS Earthquake Browser tool, students gather data to support a claim about how many large (Mw 8+) earthquakes will happen globally each year. This activity provides scaffolded experience downloading data and manipulating data within a spreadsheet.

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Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students examine the number of large earthquakes (magnitude 7 and above) per year for 1970-1999 and 1940-1999. QL: descriptors of a frequency distribution.

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Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students examine the number of large earthquakes (magnitude 7 and above) per year for 1970-1999 and 1940-1999. QL: descriptors of a frequency distribution.

Friday forum is an integral part of my course. I choose papers before the term begins based on my own interest, the interests of my students (e.g. senior thesis topics), and the types of projects we plan to complete in the course that term (e.g. term-long or multi-week research problem ). The number of papers is based on enrollment so that two students are responsible for one paper. I integrate the papers into my syllabus so the students know when each paper must be read and discussed. At the beginning of the term, I have the students rank order their choice of paper. Their decision is typically based on interest and timing with respect to the term. I then assign them a paper based on their ranking. This works well in that they typically get their first or second choice , and the students feel like they have a say in what they are going to present.
At the beginning of the term I hand out the first paper we are going to read. Everyone in the course reads the paper, and must submit three questions about the paper to me via e-mail by 4:00 PM the day before we discuss the paper. After the deadline, I compile the questions, identified by name, and send to everyone in the course as soon as possible. This typically ensures that the students read the paper, and that we have plenty of ammunition for the discussion. On the day of Friday forum (typically Friday), the two students responsible for the paper give a 10-15 minute presentation on the paper emphasizing the main point(s) of the paper, along with any background information they think is necessary to fully understand the paper. Sometime before their presentation (usually the day before), I schedule a one-hour meeting with the presenters to give them the chance to ask me any questions they have before putting together their presentation. I believe this is an essential part of the process in order to clear up any fundamental questions. After the presentation, we sit around one large table (four lab tables put together) for the discussion. I think the round table format, with everyone facing each other, helps promote discussion. Its up to the student presenters how they want to lead the discussion, but typically they focus on themes that emerged from the question s submitted by the rest of the students. This has the added benefit of drawing the rest of the class into the discussion. The hardest part for me to control as an instructor is to try and keep my mouth shut, and allow the students to explore ideas on their own.

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This problem set uses Escher drawings as 3-D projections to make analogies to real minerals as well as order/disorder relations to provide examples of features found in real minerals (e.g. superstructures, substitutions, structural defects, and modulated and incommensurate structures).

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The problems in the accompanying exercises, "From 2D to 3D: Escher drawings", deal with abstractions that can be related to minerals through geometrical features they have in common. However, we are utimately interested in real minerals, their symmetries, and complexities.
High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) provides 2-D projections of mineral structures at almost the atomic scale, and atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides 3-D information about the surfaces of minerals. By using these instruments, we can learn about defects in minerals and their complexities. The mineral examples in this problem set include representatives from several silicate structure type, sulfides, a sulfosalt, and a carbonate. Interpretation of the images is less clear-cut than of the idealized drawings. In some cases the results can be ambiguous, but the provide a scope for fruitful discussions among class members.
In a few cases, references are given to the published papers from which the images are taken. These can be used to draw students into the professional literature, even though it will not always be possible to arrive at unambiguous answers. These problems should be thought provoking and yet manageable at several levels of complexity.

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