Geology
STEM Camp lesson
Hello everyone and welcome to STEM camp and the Land Before Time. This class is going to be structured by weeks.
Week 1: Earth Science, Geology, and Plate tectonics
Week 2: Dinosaurs
Week 3: Dinosaurs
Week 4: Dinosaur Extinction and what came after
In order to start talking about the earth's history we should start by knowing how old the earth is.
Activity: How old is the earth?
Each TA is holding a sign with an age on it. Walk around the room and find the TA holding a sign that you think represents the most accurate age of the earth, then stand with them. Now socialize! The TA will introduce themselves to you and tell you a little bit about themselves. Then each of you will introduce yourself. Say your name and some facts about yourself. For example what grade you are in, what school you attend, a hobby or sport you like to play.
TA's
-Thousands of years old
-100 million years old
-One billion years old
-A few billion years old
Since the beginning of humans we have speculated how the earth was formed. Before we had science we used myths to explain phenomena. Some of the oldest human myths are those that explain the formation of the earth.
Egyptian:
The Egyptians had many gods and used them to explain how the earth, sky, and sun came to be. The Egyptian god of earth is Geb. He is an old man with a beard and a goose on his head. Geb provided crops and food. It was his laughter that caused earthquakes. Geb fell in love with Nut the goddess of the sky. Geb and Nut got married without Re's permission. Re, the sun god was so angry that he asked their father Shu, the wind and air god to separate Geb and Nut. So now the sky is separated from the earth by air.
Aztec:
Coatlicue, whose name means "Serpent Skirt," was the Earth goddess of life and death in the Aztec mythology. Coatlicue had a horrible appearance. She was depicted as a woman wearing a skirt of snakes and a necklace of hearts torn from victims.
She also had sharp claws in her hands and feet. Coatlicue was a goddess thirsty of human sacrifices. Her husband was Mixcoatl, the cloud serpent and god of the chase.
Greek:
The ancient Greeks have Gaea, or mother earth. Gaea fell in love with Uranus, the sky god. Together they gave birth to the titans and humans. The titans gave birth to the Olympic gods, Zeus and the others.
Incas:
The Incas believed that Pachamama created the earth. Her husband was the sun god.
Mayans:
The Maya believed the Earth was flat with four corners. Each corner represented a cardinal direction. Each direction had a color: east-red; north-white; west-black; south-yellow. Green was the center.
At each corner, there was a jaguar of a different color that supported the sky. The jaguars were called bacabs.
Mayans believed the universe was divided into thirteen layers, each with its own god.
Norse:
Midgard is the realm where humans live, the Earth. It was created when the god Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve slayed the giant Ymir. In Norse mythology, the world was seen as a gigantic tree, called the World Tree or Yggdrasil, around which existed nine realms, each at a different level. The roots supported the tree and its branches shaded the world. The roots of the tree reached down into the underworld. On the surface, Midgard is surrounded by a giant serpent. Bifrost is a huge bridge connecting Midgard to Asgard, the home of the gods.
Hindu:
The trinity of creation. Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer makes a universal cycle of the world’s beginning and end.
Jewish, Christian, and Islam:
God created everything in 6 days and rested on the 7th day.
Iroquois Native Americans:
Water animals inhabited the Earth before there was land. When a Sky Woman fell from her home above they caught her and dove into the seas to bring up mud. This mud they spread onto the back of Big Turtle. There it began to grow until it became North America.
Activity: Create a Creation Story
You are going to get into small groups and create a creation story.
Here are some aspects of most creation stories
-Birth
-Mother-father
-An active and passive character
-Creation comes from either above or below
-A relationship with humans and animals
Your creation story needs to explain how the earth was formed. Then you will draw a picture depicting your creation story. Once you are done we will take a break. After the break we will share our stories with the class.
Lesson one: How was the earth formed?
The universe began as a ball of gas. Gravity crushed the gas into a flat disc. As the gas pulled in on itself and condensed stars and suns were created. The heat waves of our sun pushed gases away. Heavier atoms and molecules clumped together creating rock. Those rocks collected and stayed close to the suns gravitational pull. These rocks become the planets in our solar system. One of these rocks was early earth.
Another planet called Theia crashed into early earth called Gaia. The two planets together made earth. This explains why earth has a much larger core than any other planet its size. The debris from Theia ended up forming the moon.
Video:
Demonstration: Heat Rises
-Demo of hot water and cold water in beakers
-This is what happens with the earths mantle and why we have volcanoes.
-The liquid mantle heats up and rises to the crust sometimes pushing its way through as a volcano.
-The convection currents are what push the continental plates.
Plate Tectonics or Continental Drift
A Brief History of Life on Earth
A Brief History of Geological Time
Before we begin to study dinosaurs, we need some basic background information. This chapter will ensure that you have the basic knowledge required to understand the terms and processes discussed in the chapters of this curriculum, as it pertains to Geologic Time. We start with the Geologic Time Scale. Although some students may already be familiar with the time scale, it is being included here so that all students will be familiar with it.
Geologic Time Scale
The geologic time scale provides a system of chronologic measurement relating stratigraphy to time that is used by geologists, paleontologists and other earth scientists to describe the timing and relationships between events that have occurred during the history of the Earth.
Evidence from radiometric dating indicates that the Earth is about 4.570 billion years old. The geological or deep time of Earth's past has been organized into various units according to events which took place in each period. Different spans of time on the time scale are usually delimited by major geological or paleontological events, such as mass extinctions. For example, the boundary between the Cretaceous period and the Paleogene period is defined by the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which marked the demise of the dinosaurs and of many marine species. Older periods which predate the reliable fossil record are defined by absolute age.
Each era on the scale is separated from the next by a major event or change.
Terminology
The largest defined unit of time is the supereon, composed of eons. Eons are divided into eras, which are in turn divided into periods, epochs and ages. The terms eonothem, erathem, system, series, and stage are used to refer to the layers of rock that correspond to these periods of geologic time.
Geologists further break down "periods" into three units, called Upper, Middle, and Lower. These may also be represented as Early, Middle, and Late. For example, Lower Cretaceous and Early Cretaceous are synonymous. This is because as you look at a rock layer that represents the Cretaceous, the oldest rocks are on the bottom. These oldest rocks are the "lowest" in the rock unit.
Geologic units from the same time but different parts of the world often look different and contain different fossils, so the same period was historically given different names in different locales. For example, in North America the Lower Cambrian is called the Waucoban series that is then subdivided into zones based on succession of trilobites. In East Asia and Siberia, the same unit is split into Tommotian, Atdabanian, and Botomian stages. A key aspect of the work of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is to reconcile this conflicting terminology and define universal horizons that can be used around the world.
In the curriculum you will come across the term "Index Fossil." The identification of rock strata by the fossils they contained, pioneered by William Smith, Georges Cuvier, Jean d'Omalius d'Halloy, and Alexandre Brogniart in the early 19th century, enabled geologists to divide Earth history more precisely. It also enabled them to correlate strata across national (or even continental) boundaries. If two strata (however distant in space or different in composition) contained the same fossils, chances were good that they had been laid down at the same time.
The "Age of the Dinosaurs" is that period of the time scale called the Mesozoic Era. The Mesozoic started 251 million years ago (Ma), and ended 65.5 Ma. There are three major periods of the Mesozoic, known as the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous.
Please note the times in the blocks at right are the start times for that segment. Also note that the Cretaceous is divided into only two segments, Early and Late, which omits the "middle" portion. Although this is the new accepted division for the Cretaceous, much of the literature related to dinosaurs contains references to three divisions. This curriculum references the three division format.
Of importance to dinosaur study is the further breakdown of the geologic time scale into stages. You will see these stages (ages) listed in the dinosaur descriptions. For example, the Stegosaurus lived from 155 - 150 Ma, from the Kimmeridgian Age to the Tithonian Age, of the Jurassic Period. Many of these ages will become very familiar to you.