This study is introduced at the beginning of class, and runs throughout the quarter. Students are first given a paper describing a morphological phylogeny of modern moles. The first few weeks' labs teach the students basic phylogenetic methods and the aspects of skeletal morphology needed to understand the character descriptions. Students in groups of 2 or 3 are assigned a set of characters from a particular region of the skeleton (i.e. humerus, lower teeth, skull, etc.). Those groups are responsible for learning to distinguish those characters on a representative group of modern specimens (for which the character codings are already available in the paper they have) and then coding those characters for a number of fossil taxa. The fossils are either described in papers posted on the course website or are represented by specimens held in the instructor's research lab. Students are responsible for finding time to come in and work with the specimens. The next to last lab of the quarter is concerned with analyzing data within each group, for the class as a whole, for fossil taxa alone, and for fossil and modern taxa. Students then write up the results of their analyses for their term project due at the end of the quarter.

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I order a lot of shells (online from SeaShellCity.com) and the students make their own limestones. We put the shells in portland cement (in large square ziploc containers); let them harden for a week, then cut them on the rock saw.
I have done this in a few ways.

Simple way for 3D reasoning: have students make a predictive sketch of what their limestone will look like cut. Then grade the accuracy of their prediction (award a prize).

Elaborate way for 3D reasoning, taphonomy and paleoenvironmental reconstruction: I sometimes provide the class with a carbonate shelf facies model (with a slide show from my own research), and have them work in teams, select an environment (from a map provided), research what benthos might live in that environment, then order shells of the calcareous ones, break those shells if necessary, and finally build a rock from the shells + portland cement. It really teaches taphonomy (especially comparing who lives in the environment vs. who makes it into the fossil record). Often, I then have the teams swap their rocks, and cut and interpret another team's rock.

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In this activity, students will explore what types of fossils have been found in their local area, where they were discovered, and how old they are, using the Paleobiology Database.

This activity is designed to be flexible and can be used as a lecture, lab, or homework activity. It is divided into four parts and can be modified by picking and choosing which parts (and which questions within parts) to include. It can also be modified by asking all of your students to choose the same town, collection, phyla, or species to focus on. The duration of the activity ranges from 10 minutes to two hours, depending on which parts are assigned.

Students can work as individuals or in pairs and class size can range from a small seminar (< 10 students) to a large lecture (> 100), as long as sufficient computer facilities are available.

Each student or student pair will need access to a laptop or desktop computer connected to the internet, running both Microsoft Word and an internet browser.

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For this actiivty the students will watch a Nova documentary called "The Four-Winged Dinosaur." The documentary follows two teams of scientists as they create replicas of microraptor, a dinosaur with four feathered wings, in an attempt to determine how flight evolved in birds (from the ground up or from the trees down). As the students watch the video, they should think about each hypothesis and pay attention to the lines of evidence presented on both sides of the argument. The students are given specific questions to answer while watching the video that will help them pay attention to key ideas. Outside of class they are responsible for writing a short essay (~1 page, typed) describing which origin of flight hypothesis that they believe is the most plausible and why. Students must support their argument with evidence presented in the video.

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This activity has students make small cuts in processed cheese food and then apply shear stress perpendicular or parallel to the cuts to see what sort of fracturing will occur.

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To prepare for the demonstration students are assigned homework problems dealing with brittle deformation in which they must plot Mohr diagrams and determine shear plane orientations and Coulomb coefficients. In class we examine an undeformed core of Yazoo clay (Eocene) taken from a test site on campus. The core is then uniaxially compressed using a hydraulic press. The students are then asked to observe and describe the development of shear fractures (including conjugate shear surfaces) and measure their orientations. In addition, they are asked to speculate on the development of extension fractures that develop during unloading. The fracture data are then used to estimate the Coulomb coefficient for the Yazoo clay sample and comparisons are made to values obtained from samples of differing lithologies. We wrap up with a class discussion summarizing observations from the fracture demonstration.

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If you are lucky enough to teach Petrology in a part of the world with a cold winter, freeze distillation of hard apple cider works well as a class demonstration when the cider is frozen overnight outside. The slow growth of ice forms fairly large crystals on top of the alcoholic liquid, as opposed to experiments done in a freezer where it is hard to separate ice and cider. The ice can be removed from the cider using a kitchen sieve, and the remaining hard apple cider has a beautiful amber color and a very strong smell of alcohol, so it is obvious to students what is going on chemically. The process can be discussed in terms of the ethanol-water eutectic phase diagram.

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Using the IRIS Earthquake Browser tool, students gather data to support a claim about how many large (Mw 8+) earthquakes will happen globally each year. This activity provides scaffolded experience downloading data and manipulating data within a spreadsheet.

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Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students examine the number of large earthquakes (magnitude 7 and above) per year for 1970-1999 and 1940-1999. QL: descriptors of a frequency distribution.

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Friday forum is an integral part of my course. I choose papers before the term begins based on my own interest, the interests of my students (e.g. senior thesis topics), and the types of projects we plan to complete in the course that term (e.g. term-long or multi-week research problem ). The number of papers is based on enrollment so that two students are responsible for one paper. I integrate the papers into my syllabus so the students know when each paper must be read and discussed. At the beginning of the term, I have the students rank order their choice of paper. Their decision is typically based on interest and timing with respect to the term. I then assign them a paper based on their ranking. This works well in that they typically get their first or second choice , and the students feel like they have a say in what they are going to present.
At the beginning of the term I hand out the first paper we are going to read. Everyone in the course reads the paper, and must submit three questions about the paper to me via e-mail by 4:00 PM the day before we discuss the paper. After the deadline, I compile the questions, identified by name, and send to everyone in the course as soon as possible. This typically ensures that the students read the paper, and that we have plenty of ammunition for the discussion. On the day of Friday forum (typically Friday), the two students responsible for the paper give a 10-15 minute presentation on the paper emphasizing the main point(s) of the paper, along with any background information they think is necessary to fully understand the paper. Sometime before their presentation (usually the day before), I schedule a one-hour meeting with the presenters to give them the chance to ask me any questions they have before putting together their presentation. I believe this is an essential part of the process in order to clear up any fundamental questions. After the presentation, we sit around one large table (four lab tables put together) for the discussion. I think the round table format, with everyone facing each other, helps promote discussion. Its up to the student presenters how they want to lead the discussion, but typically they focus on themes that emerged from the question s submitted by the rest of the students. This has the added benefit of drawing the rest of the class into the discussion. The hardest part for me to control as an instructor is to try and keep my mouth shut, and allow the students to explore ideas on their own.

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This problem set uses Escher drawings as 3-D projections to make analogies to real minerals as well as order/disorder relations to provide examples of features found in real minerals (e.g. superstructures, substitutions, structural defects, and modulated and incommensurate structures).

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The problems in the accompanying exercises, "From 2D to 3D: Escher drawings", deal with abstractions that can be related to minerals through geometrical features they have in common. However, we are utimately interested in real minerals, their symmetries, and complexities.
High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) provides 2-D projections of mineral structures at almost the atomic scale, and atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides 3-D information about the surfaces of minerals. By using these instruments, we can learn about defects in minerals and their complexities. The mineral examples in this problem set include representatives from several silicate structure type, sulfides, a sulfosalt, and a carbonate. Interpretation of the images is less clear-cut than of the idealized drawings. In some cases the results can be ambiguous, but the provide a scope for fruitful discussions among class members.
In a few cases, references are given to the published papers from which the images are taken. These can be used to draw students into the professional literature, even though it will not always be possible to arrive at unambiguous answers. These problems should be thought provoking and yet manageable at several levels of complexity.

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Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students build a spreadsheet to examine from a dataset the relation between oxygen isotopes in corals and the temperature of surrounding seawater.

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Students will use the available bathymetric datasets to test the utility of a flexural rigidity model of oceanic crust.

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This is one component of the Source to Sink Mini Lesson Set
Continental margins are phenomenal places to study the modern sedimentary cycle because sediment in margin regions has been routed from mountains (source) through river systems to the sea (sink); in some cases, sediment has continued across continental shelves and been delivered to the deep sea. The goal of this mini-lesson is to let students explore the characteristics of some key regions in the modern sedimentary cycle to identify and relate the variables that control source-to-sink systems. Which areas are eroding most rapidly and why? Which systems are responsible for the most rapid transfer of sediments from continents to the oceans? How do the characteristics of river systems affect the properties of the sediments they discharge? How can we apply our knowledge of these modern source-to-sink systems to the ancient sedimentary rock record?

This exercise is a practical application of optical mineralogy involving identification of some asbestiform minerals. First, students learn about asbestos and its various forms and are posed several related questions. Then, they look at several asbestos grain mounts under a petrographic microscope and answer more related questions.

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This activity uses figures from Francois Brisse as Esher drawings to teach students about 2-dimensional symmetry, especially involving translation.
This exercise is based on discovery learning. Students need little introduction to lattices and space groups. They can figure things out for themselves. For example, they will figure out what a glide plane is, and if you tell them ahead of time it takes away from the learning experience. The last question, which asks them to make their own symmetrical drawings, is difficult but often leads to some spectacular results.

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The first seven labs in this course are simply a survey of skeletal morphology in vertebrate animals; this is the first lab of the course that actually applies this understanding to solving a scientific problem. Students measure isolated skeletal elements of vertebrates in order to quantify the differences among members of different locomotor groups. They're asked to formulate hypotheses based on an understanding of physics for the differences among the locomotor categories they're examining, and then they compare their data to those expectations. The activity allows students to understand how paleontologists interpret skeletal morphology to make inferences about the ecology of extinct organisms. This will enable the students to apply their knowledge of skeletal morphology to answering a scientific question. The experience also gives them an opportunity to practice the process of paleontological science, including hypothesis testing and data interpretation.

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Purpose of Exercise: Provide students with an appreciation of the importance of using a rigorous scientific approach to the study of functional morphology. Students are asked to intuitively interpret the function of fossil skeletal morphologies. From this they identify a variety of genuine methodologies used in functional morphology, appreciate the importance of using multiple approaches, and realize how easy it is to generate untested hypotheses of function (i.e., adaptive storytelling).

Materials: Class breaks up into 4 groups of 4 students. Each is presented with a fossil or shell from an invertebrate animal. The shells provided: (1) modern Nautilus, sliced laterally to show the chamber walls; (2) Archimedes bryozoan, just the helically spiraled core of a colony; (3) fossil scaphopod; and (4) fossil gastropod with spines along the apertural lip. Only the group with the gastropod should know the phylogenic affinity of the fossil: tell this group the shell is of a gastropod. The groups with the Archimedes and the scaphopod are asked to interpret the function of the entire shell; they should not be told whether or not the entire skeleton is represented. The Nautilus group is asked to consider the function of the chamber walls. The group with the gastropod is asked to consider the function of just the spines.

Procedure:
1. The groups are asked, based on their intuition, to interpret the function of their shell or structure. (5 mins)
2. Without inquiring about their specific interpretations, the groups are then asked to think about what methodologies, philosophies, or logical approaches were utilized to make functional inferences. (5 mins)
3. Each group reports back.
4. On the board generate a list of the approaches identified. These should reflect many of the formal methods recognized within the discipline. Note how interpretations are tenuous or flawed when based on merely one approach; also note mistaken functions because of wrong assumptions or misapplied methods. (10 mins)
5. Follow this with a short lecture / discussion reviewing the formal methods employed in functional morphology.

The following files are uploaded as supportive teaching materials:
1. Lesson plan with the "conceptual change model" outline.

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After a short lecture, groups of students complete this Lecture Tutorial worksheet on the different
hypotheses of the function of Stegosaurus plates. The worksheet is designed so students examine
different lines of evidence, and they must choose the best interpretation(s).

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