Paleontology ›  Unit 1

Unit 1 Fossils & Deep Time

How a living animal becomes stone, how rock layers stack into a timeline, and how we put real ages on them. Ends with a Road Cut Report on a find you didn't expect.

🕐 10 class days🅰️ 4 Activities🅿️ 2 Projects🅱️ 1 Problem
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The Path Through Unit 1

A backhoe widening the highway outside town just scraped something that isn't rock. The foreman stopped work and called the county. The county called you. Read the full case →
1.1How a fossil forms4 days
PProject🕐 2 class days

P1.1.3  Fossil in a Box

Make a mold, a cast, and a trace fossil from plaster and clay, then write the burial story each one would need to survive 66 million years. Making them is the easy part; explaining why almost nothing gets this far is the real task.

Turn in: Mold, cast, and trace specimens + taphonomy storyboardOpen →
1.2Reading rock layers and time4 days
PProject🕐 2 class days

P1.2.3  Correlate the Canyon

Two outcrops miles apart, each with its own stack of layers. Use index fossils and one dated volcanic ash bed to match them into a single stratigraphic column, then put an age range on every layer.

Turn in: Correlated stratigraphic column + age estimate for each layerOpen →
1.3Unit problem2 days
BProblem🕐 2 class days

B1.3.1  The Road Cut Report

A highway crew has exposed bone in a hillside. You get a cross-section, the fossils found in each layer, and one radiometric date. Work out how old the bone is, how it was preserved, what the environment looked like, and whether construction should stop. Then defend your call.

Turn in: Site report with annotated cross-section and a recommendationOpen →