Dirt Decoders
Students will be joining a mission to learn about weathering and erosion. After learning a little more about the role each will play during the Adventure, students will learn about relative dating of fossils. The paleontologist team will use relative dating to discover that the bone is 50,000 years old. The age of the fossil is their first clue, but students will need to find more evidence to locate the rest of the skeleton.
- Targeted grades for Dirt Decoders: Grades 4 & 5
- Number of students: Up to 30
- Price: $150
- Length of Program: Approximately one hour
In addition, a 15-minute pre-mission conference with the instructor and teacher to make sure all technology is ready for the mission.
Simulation
In the Dirt Decoders Classroom Adventure, students will be joining a mission to learn about weathering and erosion. A paleontologist, Alex Flores, in the American Southwest (Echo Bay, Nevada) calls in the student experts after he finds a fossil of a single Ground Sloth bone in an unexpected location. Because the Ground Sloth is an extinct species, the paleontologist wants help to figure out where the bone came from and find the rest of the bones to complete the skeleton.
After learning a little more about the role each will play during the Adventure, students will learn about relative dating of fossils. The paleontologist team will use relative dating to discover that the bone is 50,000 years old. The age of the fossil is their first clue, but students will need to find more evidence to locate the rest of the skeleton.
For the next phase of their search, the students will analyze a map. However, they must first come together as a class to decide the type of map they want to study. With four options – political, temperature, topographic, and physical – the students will engage in group collaboration to determine the physical map will give them the information they need. From analyzing the map, the cartographer team will discover the fossil was found near the Colorado River. Students will follow the river in hopes they will find more bones. If they follow the river north, they will hit the Grand Canyon. There, in the Grand Canyon, the students will continue their research by focusing on weathering. During their research on weathering, the biologist team will discover a fossilized Yucca tree, which was a food source for the Ground Sloth.
Now that students know they are on the right track, they will continue their research by studying erosion. The geologist team will uncover a fossilized footprint and learn it belonged to a Ground Sloth while investigating how landscapes change over time due to wind, water, and glacial erosion. This, again, confirms that they are on the right track and should continue their search.
After learning how water, wind, and plant vegetation impact the rate of erosion, they will receive word from a dig leader nearby that one of her geologists is trapped in a flooded cave and needs their help. Students to the rescue! They must pause their research to work together on four tasks: mapping a route into the cave, mapping a route out of the cave, selecting rescue supplies, and coding a drone to deliver the rescue supplies. To thank them for successfully saving the stranded geologist, the dig leader will share her knowledge of rocks in the area and deliver a key piece of information: she saw a rock similar to ones found on the fossilized bone in a tributary upstream.
The new information is just the scientific boost the students need to narrow down their next move. After classifying rock samples from four tributaries, they will be able to identify which tributary matches the sample on their bone. When the search moves to that tributary, they will discover that their decoding skills were right. The Dirt Decoders will find the rest of the Ground Sloth remains and reunite the skeleton!