Fossils B/C

[anandymous]

Anybody know any new tests other than the ones from the test exchange

MIT, UT Austin, and UGA have released full test sets (including Fossils tests) from this year. Princeton tests should be released soon as well.

UF has also released the tests for its regional competition that it hosts, including Fossils, obviously

[twig]

question: How do you distinguish between homo erectus, neanderthalensis,and homo sapien?
i want to make sure that i'll never ever miss ANY of these ever again
Since when am I optimistic?

thank you very much
and I hope i do well at regionals ;-; (one of the coaches said this "you ready to get a medal?" i just shook my head because i think that chaparral will beat us in all of my events, but hopefully not)

AHHHH SO much stress

[EwwPhysics]

question: How do you distinguish between homo erectus, neanderthalensis,and homo sapien?
i want to make sure that i'll never ever miss ANY of these ever again
Since when am I optimistic?

thank you very much
and I hope i do well at regionals ;-; (one of the coaches said this "you ready to get a medal?" i just shook my head because i think that chaparral will beat us in all of my events, but hopefully not)

AHHHH SO much stress

When there are things on the list that look similar, I usually just find a bunch of pictures of all of them and stare at them until my brain has somehow found a pattern sorta subconsciously... competitions usually tend to ask you to identify skulls so I would research those.
H. erectus is the most primitive, so the forehead is the most sloped. The face is flat, and they had prominent ridges over the brow. They had much larger teeth than H. Sapiens.
The middle part of the face of H. neanderthalensis was very large, they had angled cheek bones, and their noses were really big. They were shorter in stature than H. sapiens, but their brains were about the same size if not larger.
H. sapiens have a steeper forehead than the other species. You're probably pretty familiar with the appearance of our skulls due to their prevalence in popular culture.
Good luck at regionals! You'll do great

[EwwPhysics]

I'm very crazy haha (I'm considering taking 6-7 events next year, I know that I'm confirmed competing (for states) for at least 4 )
I'm thinking of the future cause I'm staying in Div B next year (yes I'm becoming a freshman)
But... since we have time slots for each event and I might have to coach next year - I hope that i get to compete for all of them
Next year will be my favorite year for sure.

Any advice on studying? (I'll have to study over summer, build everything (binders, cheat sheets, and maybe even an instrument??)
Taking Rocks (confirmed for states) probably doing this with (old) Mission Possible partner, DP (confirmed for states) SOLO haha, I can do tectonics by myself, Meteo (confirmed for states) same Meteo partner as this year, Orni (kinda confirmed for states, depends on what head coach thinks of my ID skills + I'm learning from my (old) Mission Possible partner cause her partner is leaving her for Div C... She's staying in Div B with me haha),
NOT (tentative, I believe) sure if these will be confirmed next year but maybe competing for Crave the Wave, Sounds of Music if they become actually events

I'm such an Earth Science person, but I probably will take physics events next year. So much for a change
Earth Science are the best events imo

I wish our ninth graders came back T^T (so salty)... I'm sure you'll be an amazing asset to the team. Just make sure you don't overload yourself TOO much. If you find that you've been really preoccupied with your other events so you never work on one of them, I would consider dropping the one that you're least needed in.
It'll be hard to balance your time effectively with that many events. Obviously, you'll need to spend as much time as possible studying. Rocks will probably be relatively easy for you considering you're doing fossils this year so for that I would just take a lot of notes over the summer and then start studying once competition starts. Otherwise, it's hard for me to give advice since I'm relatively new to scioly (only joined this year as an 8th grader), but I can say that as long as you don't have many commitments other than scioly it's definitely possible to do that many events and do decently in all of them... However, you definitely have to be passionate about them, and be willing to spend a lot of time doing them.
If your team is one where there's at least 4 ish people competing to be on the team for most of the events, then I would recommend sticking with more like 5 events that you can get really, really good at because that would likely be more beneficial to the team. However, if they need you in as many events as possible, go for it
Good luck next year!

[twig]

I was screaming in the fossils room YET AGAIN. (If you saw me, good for you, because I was like everywhere today. After I finished Meteo, my old Misssion Possible partner and I were walking around looking into random classes. We came back to Meteo and there was this one dude who was staring at us and we were also watching our Food Sci team too, but then the proctor look at us to go away) There were only like 5 teams in the room when we were competing hehehe (one of them being Mesa Robles). Honestly, I loved the test, but also hated it because we got questions wrong that we were supposed to get right and after it, I was still screaming in agony. And I was even praying during the test because I was so scared that Chaparral would beat us, but they actually didn't beat us in any comp before. Not even at JT lol

The best question was: What is your favorite fossil on the Official Fossils list?
We scribbled this down "Bothriolepis because there was this one test that we took that had a kinda bad image of it (actaully I think it was Kraemer last year) and then we were like "Oh MY GOD! It's A CRYPTOLITHUS" that moment was priceless (but we were on different teams but same school and at that time, my partner was good at fossils, but we both thought the same thing) - DMS Fossils Team

Even at the end, another team talked to us saying that it was hard. I said that it was hard too (because I literally screamed when I saw teeth), Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, Pterosaurs, and Ichthyosaurs and failed on the random station with the phyla (you'll understand if you saw it) on it. I went back to base thinking that we did bad because there were so many nickname questions and trivia (cough cough), and tiktaalik and dimetrodon screwed us over. I was screaming too much today tbh
My partners were super slow to get here and I was so annoyed. and in DP, my partner asked "how do we get potassium in the ocean. i then responded with "Bananas", but then we probably got that question right though putting rivers/winds and something else.

Thanks to our amazing Fossils and DP coach and lots of Discord (I literally did it for like 3-4 hours a day for Fossils) for both events! (and tim ofc, without him, i would've failed DP) THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU AS WELL! i kept losing my motivation and was super tired, but ya'll kept pushing me to beat them. The problem is that for Fossils, so many people were like "Good Luck! You're going to get first place" and that scared me SOO much. Also, I'm not a fossils god either, so don't say that to me or DP god either. (some kids were exiting the room and i heard them say "red is good" and assumed that they were referring to us AND they were looking at us like the entire test. (i mean we checked our answers like 3 times...and finished the test in about 25 min, then saying that we did OK)

I also got roasted so much today too and there were a lot of dirty looks at me for some reason... who knows
Even the people that gave me the medals were like "You want a 3rd one and a 4th one?"(cause my Fossils/DP partner and Meteo partner left, so I actually had 6 medals, and so many teams were mad that our team had just got the medals and because that I was claiming it too.

[EwwPhysics]

Haha I love questions like that... there was one for circuit lab at Rustin that was just "How would your life be different without electricity?"
I hate the pressure to get first though... my partner and I got 4th at Rustin in fossils so there was big pressure to get first at Garnet ... We got fourth again rip... I blame bad test graders >:0

[twig]

Question: Since when did Calamites play a role in continental drift?
I thought they were talking about Glossopteris then I saw it said specimen B (which was calamites) so I'm confused
I blame test writers
Right, and what phylum did Gregor Mendel study on the Official Fossils list? (i scribbled down whatever came to my mind first, so i actually have no clue what the right answer is. All i know is that i got it wrong by putting Mollusca)

[ChimpLopez]

Haha I love questions like that... there was one for circuit lab at Rustin that was just "How would your life be different without electricity?"
I hate the pressure to get first though... my partner and I got 4th at Rustin in fossils so there was big pressure to get first at Garnet ... We got fourth again rip... I blame bad test graders >:0

Hey, I graded the Rustin fossils test either way, great job still! 4th is amazing, even tho I’m a lil salty that I got 4th at UPenn yesterday. Test was v easy. (Ps, I also made the Rustin orni test)

[ChimpLopez]

Question: Since when did Calamites play a role in continental drift?
I thought they were talking about Glossopteris then I saw it said specimen B (which was calamites) so I'm confused
I blame test writers
Right, and what phylum did Gregor Mendel study on the Official Fossils list? (i scribbled down whatever came to my mind first, so i actually have no clue what the right answer is. All i know is that i got it wrong by putting Mollusca)

Well since Mendel studied the pea plant’s flower color, that would make peas flowering plants, so the phylum he studied should be Anthophyta

[EwwPhysics]

Haha I love questions like that... there was one for circuit lab at Rustin that was just "How would your life be different without electricity?"
I hate the pressure to get first though... my partner and I got 4th at Rustin in fossils so there was big pressure to get first at Garnet ... We got fourth again rip... I blame bad test graders >:0

Hey, I graded the Rustin fossils test either way, great job still! 4th is amazing, even tho I’m a lil salty that I got 4th at UPenn yesterday. Test was v easy. (Ps, I also made the Rustin orni test)

I was talking about Garnet Valley... for one of the questions the answer was "minerals" and we put "dissolved minerals" and they marked it wrong T^T
4th is great especially since SOUP seemed really scary based on the teams attending... I hate it when the test is really easy so you score worse than people only because of stupid mistakes :/