Edible Devonian Marine Ecosystem

Objective: Create a fossil marine ecosystem out of edible materials. Some animals are predatory, others filter feeders or scavengers.

Supplies:

Sheet cake with 2 layers of icing          =            Sea floor

Gummi worms                                      =            Worms

Gummi fish                                            =            Bottom dwelling fish

Marshmallows                                       =            Cephalopod, crinoid heads

Licorice whips (any color)                     =            Cephalopod and horn coral tentacles, starfish arms

Sugar cone                                            =            Cephalopod shell, horn coral

Chocolate chips                                     =            Rocks

Sprinkles                                                =            Sand

Cake decorating equipment                  =            Other fossils

Licorice sticks or candy canes             =            Crinoid column

Feathers (trimmed) or 1" whips            =            Crinoid arms    

Honeycomb                                           =            Colonial coral

Think creatively. What can you use to make clam or brachiopod shells, snails, trilobites? Consider a mix with other non-edible decorations.

Mix fragments of ingredients to create "fossils" buried in the sediment (layer cake). Sprinkle sand and gravel on the top icing layer. Place the other "creatures" on the top (cephalopod, horn coral, crinoid, etc.). Drag a worm through the ice to leave a track way. Would you expect to find a fossil worm in the sediment? Why not? (No shell or other skeletal remains.)

Interpreting the ecosystem

In an ecosystem, prey must out number the predators. So the cake might have only one cephalopod, and multiple examples of filter feeders and scavengers.

Predatory: Cephalopods, some snails and starfish

Filter feeders: Clams, brachiopods, crinoids, coral

Scavengers: Some starfish and snails, trilobites

Traces: Worms and snails would leave trails in the sediment as they crawled around in search of food.

Follow-up

Create a food web. Which animal(s) are at the top of the web? at the bottom? Less well-defined?

Prepared by the Naturalists at the Falls of the Ohio State Park, Clarksville, IN

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