T312 Victor Porter Memorial Session—Climbing out of the Fishbowl: Hands-On Public Engagement in the Geosciences

Wednesday, 25 October 2017
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 2B

MONTESSORI EARLY ELEMENTARY GRADES EXPLORE DEEP TIME WITH TEXAS FOSSIL MOLLUSKS: IDENTIFYING WHO ATE WHOM AND HOW WARM THE WINTERS WERE IN THE EOCENE

Paper number: T312-7
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:40 AM – 9:55 AM

Authors

Abstract

Clams and snails ignite wonder and scientific curiosity among early elementary children. Few hominids can resist holding and probing the spirals and eccentric curves of the shells. Fossils too are jumper cables for the young naturalist’s mind. Texas Eocene euryhaline mollusk faunas, from the Crockett Formation, offer hands-on experience to kids and an elegant way to connect extinct species with the shelly fauna of today’s Gulf of Mexico. For the last decade, the Houston Museum of Natural Science has joined the Garden Oaks Montessori school in bringing first grade and kindergarten classes to riverbank exposures near Stone City, TX. Children have the exhilaration of digging samples themselves, packing them, and carrying the specimens to their mini laboratory at the school. Museum scientists organize identifying sessions, showing the class how to interpret the ecological “job” of the species. The fossil sample is laid out next to shells from living species of near-shore mollusks. The extant creatures provide analogies for reading function from form among their extinct kin.

Clams with smooth, thin shells and a large aperture for the foot are from mollusks which pull themselves down into their holes in times of danger. Thick-shelled clams with concentric ridges mark the species which can repel predators by shear strength of shell. Teeth of sharks and sting rays reveal the crushing jaws -- danger to all shelled animals -- carried by vertebrates. And there are “crime scene” clues too. Snails and clams often show “bullet” holes, the marks of predatory gastropods which drill through the shells of their prey. Beveled holes are from the smoothly domed moon-snails; straight edged holes are from the longer, lower, oyster drill snails. The shells work as fossil-thermometers. Thd entire suite of fossils matches what we see in tropical environs today -- proof that the Texas Eocene was far warmer in winter than it is today. The combination of fossil and living species vivifies basic concepts of change through geological time and the linkage between skeletal form and animal behavior.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 49, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2017AM-302130

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