This article describes a discovery of moss and ostracod fossils that led to a better understanding of Antarctica's climate history.

In this problem-based learning module, students will 'dig' for fossils in a digital environment, using the advanced graphing techniques of line-of-best-fit and piecewise functions to look for different kinds of trends in the health of the history of the earth. They will apply this information to their knowledge of the laws of superposition and index fossils to form a complete analysis in the historical health as well as to predict where we are going in the future.

Learners will become paleontologists for a day/week. They will discover this career and undertake the challenge of designing a fossil excavator structure to remove newly discovered fossils stuck in a cave crevice. As a class, graph the results on the amount of weight each structure could lift without breaking

This article describes common misconceptions held by elementary students about the history of the polar regions, fossils, and geologic time. The article provides ideas for formative assessment, teaching strategies, and the National Science Education Standards.

This multimedia resource, part of the NC Science Now series, describes how a paleontologist and her team of volunteers have uncovered the remains of a new type of dinosaur. Evidence suggests that the desert mountains in Utah, where the bones were found, was once a lush wetland. Researchers use specific methods to carefully uncover the details of not only what the world was like in the past but also how this individual lives, died, and rotted. Components of this resource include a video and a related blog article. Links to these components are provided on the page under the heading "UNC-TV Media."

This expository article for elementary students describes the dinosaurs that lived in polar regions as well as the adaptations that helped them survive in the dark and cold environment. Modified versions for younger grades are available.

This article provides science content knowledge about forces that shape the Earth's surface: erosion by wind, water, and ice, volcanoes, earthquakes, and plate tectonics and how these forces affect Earth's polar regions.

In this classroom activity, middle school students simulate a "dinosaur dig." The activity opens with background information for teachers about fossils. Working in groups, students excavate fossil sites created in advance by the teacher, or other group of students, and try to reconstruct a chicken skeleton. The activity closes with a two-page student worksheet that directs students to diagram the fossil site and includes probing questions to help them decode their findings.

In this activity, students will act as paleontologists and attempt to figure out the environment where various fossils would have existed. As paleontologists they will discover an abundance of fossils and map their location on a grid of the area.

Students read the online booklet "Fossils, Rocks, and Time" which provides an introduction to the study of earth's history and the role fossils play in helping us understand this history.

This article provides links to web sites about geologic time, fossils, and the archaeology and culture of the Arctic for elementary teachers.

In this activity, students will observe and compare fossils with living organisms. They will then make their own "fossils" and compare them to the "organism" from which they were made. Students will journal their observations, procedures, and questions.

Learning about Antarctica's past can give K-Grade 5 teachers and students lessons in geology, climate, and ecology along with literacy experiences in sequencing and time lines. The author identifies online resources for both adults and younger learners. A three-section unit plan begins with sequencing events and follows with earth's history over billions of years and the records found in rocks and fossils. The article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears.

This issue of the free online magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, explore how to use fossils and artifacts (scientific clues) to learn about the polar regions' past. Targeted literacy skills include making inferences, and using context clues to define new vocabulary.

This article assembles free resources from the Learning from the Polar Past issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine into a unit outline based on the 5E learning cycle framework. Outlines are provided for Grades K-2 and 3-5.

This article highlights children's literature about fossils, dinosaurs, archaeology, and paleontology for use in the elementary classroom.

Three types of climate proxies -- tree rings, fossils, and ice cores -- are the subjects of lessons that will help K-5 students understand that Earth's climate has been different in the past and that scientists can reveal its history. This article is from the science lessons column of the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The magazine is structured around the seven essential principles of climate literacy and identifies age-appropriate resources for young learners.

In this investigative activity, students will gather materials from their outdoor environment and work individually (or in pairs) to create a model of a fossil using primarily modeling clay and glue. Students will form and discuss the differences between a "mold" and a "cast" model fossil(s).

In this activity students will investigate four different ways fossils are made in sedimentary rock: impression, trace, preserved, and mineral replacement (petrification) fossils.

Students will make observations and measurements on photomicrographs of research samples of fossilized protists called foraminifera (or forams). Their observations mirror those made by researchers documenting a mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period about 66 million years ago. This activity complements the hands-on activity Weighing the Evidence for a Mass Extinction - On Land, in which students analyze graphs and examine data on pollen gains and fern spores to form a picture of the living landscape before and sfter the K-t mass extinction. This hands-on activity supports the HHMI short film The Day the Mesozoic Died, and in particular Act 1: An Earth-Shattering Hypothesis.