Resources for K-12 Teachers and Students

Teacher-Friendly Guides to Geology: Provides teachers with an intuitive and jargon-free review of the geology of different regions of the United States.

Learning From the Fossil Record: This volume, published by the Paleontological Society and offered on-line by the University of California Museum of Paleontology, offers articles, activities, and links for teachers.

FossilPlot: FossilPlot is a spreadsheet application for making graphs of the diversity and stratigraphic ranges of Phanerozoic marine animals. It builds on the compendium of marine genera published by Sepkoski (Bull. of Amer. Paleontology, 2002) and makes these data available, accessible and practical for teaching concepts in evolution.

Explorations Through Time: A series of interactive modules, from the UC Museum of Paleontology, that explore the history of life on Earth, while focusing on the processes of science. Each module contains suggested lesson plans and an extensive teacher’s guide.

Understanding Geologic Time: This informational tour from UC Museum of Paleontology offers students a basic understanding of geologic time, the evidence for events in Earth’s history, relative and absolute dating techniques, and the significance of the Geologic Time Scale.
K-12 URL: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/geotime/guide/index.html

The Great Fossil Find: A hands-on activity in which students are taken on an imaginary fossil hunt. Following a script read by the teacher, students "find" (remove from envelope) paper "fossils" of some unknown creature, only a few at a time. Each time, they attempt to reconstruct the creature, and each time their interpretation tends to change as new pieces are "found".

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