Transcript File
About Early Earth By: Grey , Stacey, Julie, Teshawn, John Ted was very excited. His kindergarten class was on a field trip on the way to Washington D.C. to go view a big museum about early Earth. Science was Ted’s favorite subject, so he couldn’t wait to get there. When they got there a tour guide met up with there group and took them away into the museum, leaving the outside world far behind. 1 The tour guide explained to them that the Earth’s land has always been moving and changing because of nature’s effect on it. You can identify periods of time by the different layers of what is called sedimentary rock, she explained. This was something Ted already knew, but he kept going along with the group. 2 In the next room they went into, the tour guide showed them a large scale picture of what is called the geological time scale. She told the kids that geological time units were defined by the rock records, which is always changing with nature and human interaction. 3 The next room was full of fossils, one of Ted’s favorite parts of science history. His tour guide told the class that the fossil records tell us a lot about our Earth’s past. They show changes in life throughout the layers and provide us with their own time table. Ted was amazed by all this. Using fossils, she said, was a thing they called relative dating where you compare them to other artifacts to tell time. Another method is absolute dating, where you have a time scale to use. 4 Precambrian time- lacking oxygen In the next room they continued their early topic of the Precambrian age. The tour guide told them that the air of that time had barely any oxygen in it at all. Then something called the Oxygen Holocaust happened she said, causing everyone to shiver. This was when the plants put out too much oxygen and others couldn’t take it in because they weren’t used to it, and because of this many animals died because they could not live with oxygen in the air. It was a very sad time, she said, and Ted nodded his head in agreement. 5 Ted and his group moved on to the next room, where a projector was showing video of an example of something called the Miller-Urey experiment. Their tour guide explained it was a test that Stanley Miller and Harold Urey did to determine what environment the world needed. They took the big parts that make up Earth’s air and tested them along with other things, she explained. “What did they find from this?”, Ted asked. She explained that it showed scientists that they could make their own amino acids, which are very important. 6 Fossils from the Cambrian explosion The next room they entered had many models of different old life forms from periods of time years and years ago. Their tour guide told the children that normally life species just change and grow over time, with little time periods where they will go extinct here and there. Although, there are time periods, she explained, like the Cambrian age, where no fossils are found and some species seem to just disappear while others seem to evolve a lot and diversify. This interested the class, but they seemed to care more about the animal models, so the tour guide decided it was time to move on. 7 This was the end of the tour, so it was now time for the students to ask the tour guide any questions that they had about early earth. Ted asked about careers that may study early earth. The tour guide explained that paleontologists, geologists, geochemists, anthropologists, and archaeologists may study this. She also said many other jobs need knowledge of early earth, such as historians, history and science teachers, engineers, computer scientists, and national geographic workers. Ted wanted to learn more, but sadly their time was up and they had to go. It had been a great day, and Ted was sure he would come back to the museum one day. 8 Bibliography http://www.nytix.com/Museums/ http://buglady.org/geologic-time-scale/ http://prifx.com/cartoon-pictures-best-wall-stickers-inpreschool-and-kindergarten-classroom.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531576/Snoopyisland-Volcanic-eruption-forms-new-land-mass-resemblesfamous-cartoon-character-complete-collar.html http://www.lucylearns.com/fossil-pictures-fossil-clipart.html http://planets.net/earth/ http://www.biblicalcreation.org.uk/scientific_issues/bcs07 4.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event http://people.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiolog y/miller.html http://biologos.org/blog/the-cambrian-explosiontransitional-forms-and-the-tree-of-life http://www.monaghanpeace.ie/2013/archaeology-or- genealogy/ http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric -world/cambrian/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/5/l_035_01. html