If you’re looking for a science activity to help introduce environmental
issues, or if you’re looking for fun and challenging real-world math
problems, we invite you to take a look at this issue of Smithsonian in Your Classroom.
In the lesson plan, the class does the work of a team of
paleontologists studying a time of rapid global warming 55 million years
ago. By examining fossils of leaves from various tree species, and by
incorporating the findings into a mathematical formula, the students are
able to tell average annual temperatures during this prehistoric time.
The method they practice is called “leaf-margin analysis,” which begins
by determining the percentage of leaves that have smooth edges, as
opposed to toothed, or jagged, edges. This number—the percentage—goes
into an equation that gives the average temperature in Celsius. The
higher the percentage of smooth leaves, the warmer the climate.
The leaf fossils were discovered by a Smithsonian paleontologist in the
Bighorn Basin of Wyoming. It was a major find: the leaves were the first
record of plant life from the rapid warm-up, called the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). They showed, more clearly than
any other fossils, the dramatic changes undergone by living things
during a change of climate.
The PETM has taken on a topicality in recent years. It has been
established that the warming resulted from releases of carbon dioxide
comparable to human-generated releases in our time. Climate scientists
have been turning to PETM experts for an understanding of what our own
future might hold.
http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/climate_change/index.html
Online interactive: http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/idealabs/prehistoric_climate_change/index.htm
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