6th Grade/ Climate and Archaeology

We have started an experiment involving the effects of different climate conditions on archaeological findings in which we will observe the changes over the course of four weeks. In the meantime, we focus on the question of whether climate can change in an area overtime, and thus bring forth differing archaeological findings. To help us, a team of Smithsonian scientists have just returned from a fossil hunt and have asked your class to help them analyze some of the fossils. At two dig sites in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, they found bones of mammals that lived in the early Cenozoic era, about 10 million years after the dinosaurs. We will analyze these fossils of leaves from prehistoric trees in order to calculate ancient temperatures to see if climate can in fact change in an area over time.