Description
- Title: Global Change - Reading Ocean Fossils
- Air Date: February 12, 2015
- Series: Smithsonian Science How webcasts, which are designed to connect natural history science and research to upper-elementary and middle-school students.
This video features Dr. Brian Huber, paleobiologist at the National Museum of Natural History. Brian specializes in tiny organisms called foraminifera (forams) that are great indicators of global changes. How can a microscopic organism that most people have never seen be so useful? Take a journey with Brian to find out how forams can tell stories about conditions on Earth millions of years ago. See how fossilized forams are collected from deep oceans and Antarctic ice. Visit an ice-covered place that used to be warm enough for marine reptiles to survive. Consider what Brian's findings suggest for future conditions on Earth, including global climate.
Teaching Resources
Tracking Global Change Through Ocean Fossils
National Middle School Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
Earth Science
MS-ESS1 Earth's Place in the Universe
- MS-ESS1-4: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence from rock strata for how the geologic time scale is used to organize Earth's 4.6-billion-year-old history.
MS-ESS2 Earth's Systems
- MS-ESS2-2: Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth's surface at varying time and spatial scales.
Life Science
MS-LS4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
- MS-LS4-1: Analyze and interpret data for patterns in the fossil record that document the existence, diversity, extinction, and change of life forms throughout the history of life on Earth under the assumption that natural laws operate today as in the past.
- MS-LS4-2: Apply scientific ideas to construct an explanation for the anatomical similarities and differences among modern organisms and between modern and fossil organisms to infer evolutionary relationships.
