Scioly.org

Fossils B/C: Teams demonstrate their knowledge of ancient life by completing selected tasks at a series of stations including but not limited to fossil identification, answering questions about classification, habitat, ecologic relationships, behaviors, environmental adaptations and the use of fossils to date and correlate rock units.

Fossils Wiki

Fossils Test Exchange 2016

Past Threads: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016

Past Question Marathons:2015, 2016

It's finally back! I see they added lots of fun fossils like sharks and molluscs and three new dinosaur genera. Can't wait to compete in this event!

Hi! I am new to fossils. What is the best way to tackle the long list of fossils and additional material? In addition, what is the best thing to bring to competition: self made cheat sheets of the fossils or a handbook? Thanks in advance

scienceisfunalil wrote:Hi! I am new to fossils. What is the best way to tackle the long list of fossils and additional material? In addition, what is the best thing to bring to competition: self made cheat sheets of the fossils or a handbook? Thanks in advance

In the past, a handbook and a binder has been allowed, but it seems this is no longer the case (just a binder now). Anyway, the way I did fossils 3/4 years ago was go through each item on the list and compile information about into a fact sheet, e.g.

• How long ago did it live?
• What habitat did it live in? What kind of niche did it fill? Was it herbivorous, omnivorous, etc.?
• What does it look like? What kind of unusual anatomic features does it have? Around how big was it?
• Where did the name and scientific name come from?

And then I added an index of pictures at the end.

UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:

scienceisfunalil wrote:Hi! I am new to fossils. What is the best way to tackle the long list of fossils and additional material? In addition, what is the best thing to bring to competition: self made cheat sheets of the fossils or a handbook? Thanks in advance

In the past, a handbook and a binder has been allowed, but it seems this is no longer the case (just a binder now). Anyway, the way I did fossils 3/4 years ago was go through each item on the list and compile information about into a fact sheet, e.g.

• How long ago did it live?
• What habitat did it live in? What kind of niche did it fill? Was it herbivorous, omnivorous, etc.?
• What does it look like? What kind of unusual anatomic features does it have? Around how big was it?
• Where did the name and scientific name come from?

And then I added an index of pictures at the end.

thanks for responding! I am looking through the list right now and it appears that most of the items are genus or order... does this mean we need to know every species within that genus/order?

scienceisfunalil wrote:

UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:

scienceisfunalil wrote:Hi! I am new to fossils. What is the best way to tackle the long list of fossils and additional material? In addition, what is the best thing to bring to competition: self made cheat sheets of the fossils or a handbook? Thanks in advance

In the past, a handbook and a binder has been allowed, but it seems this is no longer the case (just a binder now). Anyway, the way I did fossils 3/4 years ago was go through each item on the list and compile information about into a fact sheet, e.g.

• How long ago did it live?
• What habitat did it live in? What kind of niche did it fill? Was it herbivorous, omnivorous, etc.?
• What does it look like? What kind of unusual anatomic features does it have? Around how big was it?
• Where did the name and scientific name come from?

And then I added an index of pictures at the end.

thanks for responding! I am looking through the list right now and it appears that most of the items are genus or order... does this mean we need to know every species within that genus/order?

No, you're only expected to ID up to the most specific taxon listed, e.g. you don't have to identify any graptolith orders, genera, or species because the most specific taxon listed is Class Graptolithina.

same as with CircuitLab, would anyone happen to know a good place to start on this event?

Etan wrote:same as with CircuitLab, would anyone happen to know a good place to start on this event?

Personally, I started by creating templates for each classification (I had different ones for Phylum, Class, Order, Family, and Genus/Species.) Now I am just filling in that information, going in the order of the list.

Etan wrote:same as with CircuitLab, would anyone happen to know a good place to start on this event?

See my previous post. Honestly, the best way to start is to just jump in! Take a look at Wikipedia pages and look up any words you don't know. Get a good grip of the geological timescale (just in general, you don't have to memorize any periods, and looking at any units of time smaller than epochs isn't really helpful). Imagine the world as it might've been before, and have fun with it!

UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:

Etan wrote:same as with CircuitLab, would anyone happen to know a good place to start on this event?

See my previous post. Honestly, the best way to start is to just jump in! Take a look at Wikipedia pages and look up any words you don't know. Get a good grip of the geological timescale (just in general, you don't have to memorize any periods, and looking at any units of time smaller than epochs isn't really helpful). Imagine the world as it might've been before, and have fun with it!

Agree, except I would say you should memorize all of the geologic periods from the Phanerozoic, and it's also helpful to memorize the epochs in the Cenozoic. Being able to refer to those from memory is very helpful sometimes.