Paleontology 2024: Day 1: In-Class Activities! (Ellie)

Today, the Paleo crew kicked back in class and learned briefly about the geological overview of Texas. Dr. Salem showed us where Texas was during the Permian Period with a website that allowed us to go back in time and view what the Earth looked like. The crew discovered that half of Texas was a Permian basin with a mountain range and the other half was submerged underwater. Shortly after we rolled out two maps one explaining how old the rocks are around the world and in the ocean and the other explaining the geological areas of Texas. We discovered that the oldest rocks on Earth are on the continents, mostly in Canada and Scandinavia and the oldest rocks in Texas are the Llano Uplift area and an area out by El Paso. Dr. Salem explained to the group how the rocks near the coast are younger and as you go upstate the rocks get older with some younger rocks mixed in. We also covered how old the rocks we would be digging in and learned that they were around 300 million years old. Later, the students selected a topic given by Dr. Salem to do a presentation or activity on. Out of the 11 different topics, I chose to cover the topic of Dimetrodons. The rest of the morning before lunch the students spent time researching and putting together their presentation that they would later share back their findings with the class. After lunch, the students returned to the classroom to finish working on their presentations and then after an hour, some students started presenting their topics.

Topics that were covered today:

The Geologic Time Scale

Roadside Geology Houston to Seymour

Permian Geology of Texas

Sedimentary Rocks and Stratigraphy