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This test was fun- but definitely challenging. We got 37th, which was disappointing, but it was mainly because of the time. There were a couple of stations in particular I remember being difficult.

1. There was a station asking which sample was a worm burrow, that one I just couldn't tell!

2. One looked like a grain of sand, which I assume looking back was Astraeospongia, but I couldn't quite tell. (I think I put that it was in foraminifera. ><)

3. Basilosauridae - I had no clue except that the fossil specimen was a vertebrate...

4. Dinosaurs - I knew all, not enough time...

5. Fenestrae, Branching, and massive - I don't know why I didn't study this...

6. Some of the questions like Are all specimens here in Phylum Bryozoa? were tricky because I felt like there was one specimen in another phylum. ><
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I'm going to be a lot more active on the quizzing thread in hopes that I do well. Nice job to all who competed. I'll hopefully be able to study with you all next year!

I was one of the Fossils C national supervisors, I checked you guys all in at the door and I graded.

Hope you guys enjoyed the test, I helped write it =)

Sorry the time was so short, we had a bit of a miscommunication. I had intended it to be 2:15 per station but a few of the other supervisors thought that each time slot was 50 minutes and not an hour and they didn't realize until after the first time slot, so the time was a little shorter than I had planned. Still, an extra 15 seconds per station probably wouldn't have changed much and might have caused us to go over time anyway, so it worked out.

The tournament was a blast, and congrats to Iolani for first in Fossils! And congrats to everybody else for other stuff, I guess, haha.

gneissisnice wrote:I was one of the Fossils C national supervisors, I checked you guys all in at the door and I graded.

OMG THAT WAS YOU I WAS THERE

And I thought the timing was just right for the test, it was fantastically written and the specimens were beautiful!

I'm going to be participating in fossils again like I know many of you will also be doing. I came to inquire upon which resources you used to find the common names of all organisms and all major taxonomic ranks, as I could not find either of these online.

Thanks!

JoJoKeKe wrote:I'm going to be participating in fossils again like I know many of you will also be doing. I came to inquire upon which resources you used to find the common names of all organisms and all major taxonomic ranks, as I could not find either of these online.

Thanks!

Wikipedia and the Taxonomicon http://taxonomicon.taxonomy.nl/TaxonTre ... 0&id=71606 are both very good sources for generally everything in fossils, especially the major taxons.

JoJoKeKe wrote:I'm going to be participating in fossils again like I know many of you will also be doing. I came to inquire upon which resources you used to find the common names of all organisms and all major taxonomic ranks, as I could not find either of these online.

Thanks!

I relied on Wikipedia heavily for the event, as well as the recommended field guides (which weren't as helpful, but they still work).

Okay. I was making a guide with all the taxonomy of the organisms on the official list but it seemed that Wikipedia was incorrect according to my Field Guide so I had to terminate that idea. Are you 100% certain Wikipedia is correct in the taxonomy? From my experience it appeared that the phylum and class would be correct but past that it would be incorrect. How did you maneuver around this issue?

I am working on a quizzer (scioly.club/quiz) for Fossils and would like to hear feedback from more people doing the event. If you have any features you would like to see added, please let me know and I can work on it.

JoJoKeKe wrote:Okay. I was making a guide with all the taxonomy of the organisms on the official list but it seemed that Wikipedia was incorrect according to my Field Guide so I had to terminate that idea. Are you 100% certain Wikipedia is correct in the taxonomy? From my experience it appeared that the phylum and class would be correct but past that it would be incorrect. How did you maneuver around this issue?

With Fossils you can never be sure; the taxonomy varies greatly, and there is often no general consensus on which name is correct (and even if there is, the proctors are usually professors, meaning that they've been involved with fossils in general for a long time, and are likely to use older names that are either no longer used or invalid). The best you can do is to try and guess which names the supervisors will likely use.

Okay, from your statement it sounds like the proctor will also know that your answer was once an accepted taxonomic rank. Therefore, it seems like there can be multiple correct answers. Thank you, Unome.