Educator Handbook: Earth's Time

EARTH’S TIME

GRADE LEVEL: 4 - 8

OBJECTIVE:

Students will be able to explain the progression of events and natural and cultural history over time that produced the fossils and the Falls of the Ohio.

MATERIALS:

Large sheets of paper six feet in length

Historical biography of the Falls

Crayons and pencils

PROCEDURE:

1. Draw a center line along the length of the paper. Divide the line into three sections representing the three eras, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. The Paleozoic era should be the largest, at least half of the paper.

2. Divide eras into periods. (See chart on next page.) Start with the end of the Precambrian, which was the largest, about seven times longer than all the other periods put together. The following list has the names and millions of years that they span.

3. Indicate the important creatures or developments found in each period.

4. Make special note of the time of the formation of the fossil beds and the creatures that were living then. (Devonian Period 408 to 360 million years ago during the Paleozoic era.)

EXTENSIONS / EVALUATIONS:

5.  Have students create a time line for their life span, eighty or ninety years. Have them mark special eras, babyhood, childhood, teenage, adulthood, old age. Have students determine which era are the longest?   Shortest?  Ask students what important things have happened to them and what they expect will happen in their lifetime personally, locally, and globally? How does their life span compare to the earth's life span?

6.  How can you manage your life and insure your healthy quality of life? How can you insure the survival of the earth and its health? Design a plan of action for both cases.     

7.  Do the matching test activity that is with this lesson.  The information can be found in the exhibits at the Falls Center.

Answers to Falls Time Line activity on page 12:  1, 6, 4, 3, 11, 9, 2, 12, 5, 7, 10, and 8.

         Platyceras dumosum – a spiny snail                  Triceratops – a “spiny” Cretaceous dinosaur

Geologic Time

Era (In italics)  Period                   Began (years ago)        What happened?

Precambrian                                 4.6 billion                         Origin of Earth

                         Archean Eon          3.8 billion                          First bacteria

                         Proterozoic Eon    2.5 billion                          One celled organisms

                         Vendian “Period”  700 million                        Multicellular organisms

Paleozoic      “Early Life”                                                     Rise of Exoskeleton

                         Cambrian               570 million                       Sudden abundance of shelly life

                         Ordovician              505 million                      Rise of corals, jawless fish

                         Silurian                   438 million                       Earliest land plants and animals

                         Devonian               408 million                       First amphibians & forests, diverse fish

                         Mississippian        360 million                       Abundant crinoids, coal forests

                         Pennsylvanian       320 million                       First reptiles, abundant insects

                         Permian                 286 million                       Largest extinction recorded

Mesozoic     “Middle Life”                                                   Rise of the Dinosaurs

                          Triassic                 248 million                     First dinosaurs & mammals 

                         Jurassic                 213 million                     First birds

                          Cretaceous          144 million                     First flowering plants, extinction of dinosaurs,                                                                                                 ammonites, etc.

Cenozoic    “Recent Life”                                                  Rise of Mammals

                       Epochs

                       Tertiary                                                             Mammals diversify

                       Paleocene      66 million

                             Eocene             55 million

                             Oligocene         38 million

                             Miocene            25 million

                             Pliocene            5 million

                       Quaternary                                                      Humans appear

                            Pleistocene        2 million                          Ice Age

                            Holocene           10 thousand                   Spread of Homo sapiens

Table of Contents

Created January 25, 2010