Module 1, Activity VI: Finding the Fossils

Essential Questions:

1. What types of fossils are commonly found in Western NY?
2. What geologic events were instrumental in forming Western New York’s topography over the past few million years?

Engage:

1. Have you ever found a fossil?
2. If so: where?
3. If not: where would you look for fossils?

Explore:

1. Are fossils found everywhere? Think, pair, share with your group and class about where you’d look for fossils and what type of organism you’d expect to find there.

Explain A:

View Fossil Extraction #1 video clip.

Elaborate B:

1. What foes ubiquitous mean?
2. What are ubiquitous in the rocks?
3. Why do you think the nicest fossils are “right at the top” or on the surfaces of the exposed faces of the rock slabs?

Explain B:

View Fossil Extraction #2 video clip.

Elaborate B:

1. What tools would’ve been useful in extraction some of the fossils you’ve seen in the video clips?
2. What is a paleontologist?
3. What do “they argue about”?
4. What may have happened to these organisms to preserve them in these rocks where were finding them?

Explain C:

View Trilobite video clip

Elaborate C:

1. What is the organism?
2. Why are they significant?

Evaluation:

1. Why are the fossils in the video clips where they are?
2. Do you think Western New York is the only place you’d find similar fossils? (Refer to your Devonian Maps)
3. Hypothesize about where else you would find fossils of similar species formed during the Devonian period. Think, pair, share.

Extension Activity:

Explain:

View The Boulder video clip.

Elaborate:

1. What is a boulder?
2. Hypothesis about the origin and current placement of the boulder.
3. What events (things) have affected Western NY (and the Northern United States in general) over the past million years or so, lasting between 15-20 thousand years?
4. Besides dropping boulders, what other effects did those events have on the topography of the area?