Finding Fossils Field Trip

Grade: 7
Course: Science
Curricular Content: The fossil record provides evidence for changes in biodiversity over geological time: (1) The geologic time scale categorizes the time periods of Earth’s geologic history and (2) ages of rocks and fossils can be determined by both relative and absolute methods.
Time of Year: Spring or fall (no snow)

The East Kootenay’s are LOADED with fossils! Who knew? As I was researching my last field trip post about landforms, I stumbled across this blog post by Fossil Huntress. It is amazing! It was this post that originally triggered my ideas to do a field trip to find fossils. My excitement about the local fossils lead me to Dan Bowden after reading this blog post. I just couldn’t believe that these fossils were found locally! So after working up the courage, I emailed both of them to ask for field trip suggestions, and they both replied within hours.

To begin the unit of what life was like back when these organisms were alive, I would go through the “Virtual Sea Odyssey” for Burgess Shale (a large fossil site west of Lake Louise that is protected by Parks Canada). The “Virtual Sea Odyssey” allows students to visually watch the organisms as they move and interact, but my favorite video, is the “Burial” which shows the seafloor community “being covered by a rapid mudflow event.” This could begin the conversation about how fossils are created – what processes needed to occur in order for these organisms to be preserved.

To wrap up the unit, I would do a field trip to a fossil site. There are two really great local options. The first is to the Forte Steele Gun Range and the second is the ammonite fossil near Fernie. The Forte Steele site is easy for a school bus to get to and allows students to find and keep their own fossils. The ammonite fossil near Fernie is supposedly the biggest and oldest ammonite fossil in the world! It is 150 million years old and measures approximately 1.5 meters across. I had the privilege of visiting this site a number of years ago and it was spectacular. However, there are some draw backs to the Fernie ammonite as a field trip. (1) You need to travel a little ways up a gravel road where there could be active logging. (2) You will have to hike a short distance to the site; I’m not sure how far the hike will be as access to the trail has changed since I was last there do to logging, but it’s not very far. (3) Students will not be able to bring home their own fossil. While the ammonite is amazing, and every one should see it once, there is not much to do there besides look at the fossil. Both sites have a lot to offer, maybe have the students vote on which site they’d like to go to: a world famous fossil or a place you can find your own fossil?

Because I don’t know much about fossils, I would really like to have an “expert” with us to answer the students questions about the site and local fossils. Here are some options:

• Guy Santucci – gsantucci@telus.net
• Dan Bowden – palaeopix@gmail.com
• The Fossil Huntress – toscamedia@gmail.com

As for a little sweet treat, I love the idea of carefully “excavating” the chocolate chips out of chocolate chip cookies as if they were fossils (click the image for more details).

UPDATE NOVEMBER 24, 2022 – This week I toured the SD5 Design Lab in Cranbrook, and guess what I found?! Little 3D fossils that students had created themselves! How cool would that be?! I believe the students first drew them by hand before having them created on the 3D printer.

CROSS-CURRICULAR OPPORTUNITIES:
I’ve saved lots of cross-curricular ideas on my Pinterest board here: