Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013 - (Page 28)

CTY s on m mm Co aC Di me i iki l, W Ge YG .. r l lC a ae Ch iC mi PALEOBIOLOGY A history of Life on earth by Spencer McClung H 28 imagine ave you ever been hiking in the woods or hills and found a rock with strange grooves or bumps in it? Those shapes could be the fossilized remains of creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. Even tiny dots or indents can be a fossil. Although you will probably not find a T. rex in your garden, you can often find fossils in sedimentary rock, which is extremely common. Scientists can tell numerous things from a fossil, such as where and when the creature lived, what it ate, and how it died. I learned to do exactly this kind of analysis in the Paleobiology course I took at CTY last summer. A Paleozoic Menagerie When I first signed up for this course, I thought we would learn about dinosaurs. I was surprised when we focused much more on early Paleozoic era creatures, but I soon found myself as intrigued by trilobites as I had been by pterodactyls. For our first activity, we looked at a mould fossil of a group of brachiopods found in Europe. We learned that fossils are often found in groups because events like landslides or mudflows can preserve entire colonies of animals at one time. As we examined the mould, we could see that it contained a few different species; some had up to 10 rings on them while others had none, and they varied widely in size. Only about one Jan/Feb 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
The Week I Turned Green
No Turning Back
Landsat: A Continuing Legacy of Earth Observation
Sensing Danger
The Black Gold Miners
Cleaner Water, Brought to You by Sunlight and Science
Journey to the Frozen Continent
CTY Paleobiology
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Innovation in the Real World
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013