Teeth Telling Tales

Fossils Uncover Ancient Ecosystems

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Join us as we replicate a day of research with Dr. Darin Croft, paleontologist with Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Specializing in mammals that went extinct millions of years ago, Dr. Croft’s work launches this lab experience by illustrating how careful measurements of fossil teeth can help scientists build a picture of entire ancient ecosystems. Using real diagnostic equipment and casts of specimens found during recent South American fieldwork, your amateur paleobiologists will learn how ancient teeth tell tales!

Teacher Guide

 

Ohio's Learning Standards

Grade 3

Life Science – Behavior and Growth Changes

  • Individuals of the same kind of organism differ in their inherited traits. These differences give some individuals an advantage in surviving and/or reproducing.

Grade 4

Life Science – Earth’s Living History

  • Changes in an organism’s environment are sometimes beneficial to its survival and sometimes harmful.
  • Fossils can be compared to one another and to present-day organisms according to their similarities and differences.

Mathematics – Measurements and Data

  • Know relative sizes of the metric measurement units within one system of units.

Grade 5

Life Science – Interconnections Within Ecosystems

  • Organisms perform a variety of roles in an ecosystem.
  • All of the processes that take place within organisms require energy.

Grade 6

Life Science – Cellular to Multicellular 

  • Living systems at all levels of organization demonstrate the complementary nature of structure and function. 

Grade 7

Life Science – Cycles of Matter and Flow of Energy 

  • Changes in an organism’s environment are sometimes beneficial to its survival and sometimes harmful. 

Grade 8

Life Science: Species and Reproduction

  • Diversity of species, a result of variation of traits, occurs through the process of evolution and extinction over many generations. The fossil records provide evidence that changes have occurred in number and types of species.
  • Every organism alive today comes from a long line of ancestors who reproduced successfully every generation.
  • The characteristics of an organism are a result of inherited traits received from parent(s). 
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