Who found a Trilobite?
What is a Trilobite?
These were some of the things that the teachers from Region 9 who went fossil hunting in Mineral Wells learned from Kim Beck and her friends from the Houston Museum of Natural Science. As Jim Flis, geologist, described the area of Mineral Wells as it was 300 million years ago, Dr. Robert Bakker discussed the life forms that existed and those that did not. We quickly listened and then began our hunt to make a complete collection.As we looked at the ground the rocks became fossils and the big funny words became real. The HMNS staff moved through the group providing one on one tutorials in terminology and structures. By the time we broke for lunch we took our ziplocks full of treasure and shared what we had found skillfully using our new found vocabulary.
It couldn’t have been a more fabulous day- between the beautiful weather, the company we kept, and the lessons we learned and shared. Teachers left refreshed, excited, and ready to share new found secrets of the Carboniferous Period.
Oh and by the way-
"Trilobites ("three-lobes") are extinct marine arthropods. They appeared in the Early Cambrian period and flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before beginning a drawn-out decline to extinction. The last of the trilobites disappeared in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago Trilobites are a well-known fossil group, arguably next most famous after the dinosaurs." Trilobite. (2009, March 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:03, March 12, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trilobite&oldid=276632416
