March 24

Who Wants to Live a Million Years? 🦖🌿

📅 Activity Completed: March 22
🔗 Student Link: Who Wants to Live a Million Years?

In this interactive simulation, students explored the role of variation, heredity, and natural selection in evolution. The goal was to create a species with the right traits to survive 1 million years in a changing environment!

🧬 What We Did:

• Students selected traits for a population of fictional animals.

• As the environment changed, students observed how certain traits helped their species survive, while others led to extinction.

• They faced a series of environmental challenges and tracked which traits helped their species adapt and reproduce over time.
  
  

• Throughout the activity, students recorded:
  ✅ The challenges their species faced
  ✅ Which traits led to survival
  ✅ Traits that did not thrive
  ✅ Whether or not their species survived the full 1 million years

🔍 Key Concepts Reviewed:

• Variation: Not all individuals in a species are the same.

• Heredity: Traits are passed from parents to offspring.

• Natural Selection: Individuals with traits that give them an advantage are more likely to survive and pass those traits on.

• Adaptation: Beneficial traits spread through the population over generations.

🌍 Why This Matters:

This activity helped students understand how environmental pressures shape species over time through the process of natural selection. It connected directly to our work on mutations, adaptations, and survival of the fittest.

✅ Great job experimenting with evolution in action! Could your species survive a million years? 🦕💥