When I die I want to become a fossil. I wonder what I could have done to my body to improve my chances. Where should I have my body placed so that future scientists can learn from my body? Should I be buried in the desert, dropped into a glacier crevasse, injected with food preservatives, go to the cold bottom of the sea? What if I wanted to experiment with my son’s hamster after it dies? How long will it take for the hamster to decompose if I bury it in my yard? What could I do to increase or decrease the rate at which this occurs?
Vice President, Learning Experiences 7 Posts
Robert Corbin is VP, Learning Experiences at Discovery Place. Prior to joining Discovery Place in 2007, Robert spent 15 years in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, teaching science and serving Science Academic Content Coach and mentor. Robert has developed science curricula for the Weather Channel, Paramount Pictures, the ASPCA, and the Environmental Literacy Council and he wrote curriculum to accompany Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth.
Robert holds an M.A. degree in Natural Science Teaching from the University of South Carolina and a B.S. in Science Education from Michigan State University and recently completed his doctoral degree at UNC-Charlotte.
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Post a CommentWhen I saw this blog my first thought was my favorite lesson plan research website. LearnNC has lots of great fossill references. http://www.learnnc.org/search?area=&phrase=Fossils.
We learn that fossilization is a rare event so it might be hard to preplan a funeral with a fossilization component. The chances of a given individual being preserved as a fossil are very small. So, were Dr. Evil and Austin Powers fossils when they were cryogenically frozen? What about Ted Williams? head? Some organisms, however, have better chances than others because of the composition of their skeletons or where they lived. Breithaupt, B. FOSSILIZATION AND ADAPTATION:ACTIVITIES IN PALEONTOLOGY http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/Breithaupt2.html.
In my computer lab at Stonewall Jackson, in our Earth Science course, Plato courseware and our trusty Glencoe Science textbook help us uncover that fossils with original preservation are unusual ? soft and hard parts of an animal or plant that have been unchanged since their demise. Fossils can be preserved by freezing, drying out or by being in oxygen free environments ? are severed body parts in jars at forensic museums fossils? Petrified wood is a fossil. I remember going to Calvert Cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay and finding fossils. Does this mean that I can go to Maxwell House and get freeze dried to be a fossil?
Tom Brown - September 16, 2009