Geological Timeline

This activity is intended to assist students in understanding how to interpret an use the geolical timelines used to describe the Earth's ancient pre-history. Before doing this exercise students should use the following on-line explorations to become more familiar with this concept.

• Understanding Geologic Time http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/geotime/index.html

• Getting Into the Fossil Record http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/fossil/index.html

• What did T. rex taste like? http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/Trex/index.html

• UCMP - Navigating the Geology Wing http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/navgeology.html

• UCMP - Geology Entrance http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibit/geology.html

• Discover the history of life http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/historyoflife/histoflife.html

• K-12 Resources - http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/museum/k-12.html

• Geologic Time Scale - Geological Time Line - Geology.com http://geology.com/time.htm

Personal Timeline

download as word .doc file

A. Worksheet

To create a personal timeline you must first identify the events that have been most significant in your life up to now.

1.    Fill in the first 3 columns  for the 4 events shown. Do this to the nearest ½ year.

2.    Add at least one event that happened before kindergarten.

3.    Add least one that was during your elementary school time.

4.    Fill in the how old you were, how long ago it was, or what year it was.

5.    Complete

Only use those events that you feel were important to avoid breaking down your timeline too much.

B. Make your own Personal Timeline

Fill in the chart on the following page. Use each row to represent 6 months.

1. The first column will represent the eras of your life such as Baby, Child, and Teenager.

2. Those could be further divided into periods such as Crawlerean, Preschoolean, Toddlerean, Kidergarterian, Elementarean, and MidSchooleran and represented in the second column.

3.    The final column should contain your epochs which would break the periods down to smaller chunks.

4.    Shade in the eras, periods, and epochs and label them with an appropriate name.

____________________’s Personal Timeline

C. Example

Ivan’s Personal Timeline

Ivan is 14 and in the 9^th Grade

D. Using intervals to describe time

Scientists use intervals to describe when, and for how long, events occurred in the past. From Ivan’s chart we can see that he began riding a BMX bicycle during the second half of his Protoliterate period. This was in the first part of the Elementarean era.

E. Questions

Answer the following questions using the  example above as a model of how to describe what part of  Ivan’s life is being considered.

1.    In what era did Ivan learn to talk? ________________

2.    Using eras, describe when Ivan was still using training wheels.

3.    What epochs were included in his Protoliterate period?

4.    The Minibike epoch was during his _______ Elementarean era.

5.    Did he become fully literate in middle school?  YES  --or-- NO

6.    What do the prefixes pre, mid, proto, trans, and semi mean? Use one word for each.

pre =_________, mid= _______, proto=________,

trans=________, semi=________

7.    How long was his semiliterate period?

8.    How long was the Middle BMX epoch?

Explorations Through Time  - http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explotime.html

	A series of interactive modules that explore the history of life on Earth, while focusing on the processes of science. Each module contains suggested lesson plans and an extensive teacher’s guide.
Module Target Grade Levels K–4 5–8 9–12 Life Has a History introduces students to the history of life and how it results in today’s biodiversity. Getting Into the Fossil Record helps students gain a basic understanding of what a fossil is and how a fossil forms. Understanding Geologic Time introduces students to geologic time, the evidence for events in Earth’s history, relative and absolute dating techniques, and the significance of the geologic time scale. Stories From the Fossil Record provides students with a basic understanding of how fossils can be used to interpret the past. There are four different pathways to explore: biodiversity, geologic time, paleoecology and past lives.     What Did T. rex Taste Like? provides an introduction to cladistics (a way of organizing living things by common ancestry and evolutionary relationships) and involves students in posing hypotheses about past life based upon evolutionary history.   Adventures at Dry Creek virtually engages students in scientific research. Students join “science mentors” to gather data and interpret direct and indirect evidence to propose multiple hypotheses of what life was like in Montana 60–70 million years ago.   The Evolution of Flight examines evidence from the fossil record, behavior, biomechanics and cladistic analysis to interpret the sequence of events that led to flight in the dinosaur lineage. Students gather, organize and analyze data and then propose hypotheses about the evolution of flight in birds.   =suggested grade level; =adaptable to grade level
EXPLORATIONS THROUGH TIME is a project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology with support from: