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Essential Question:
How did the fossil of a tropical turtle end up frozen in the Canadian Arctic?
Related Benchmarks:
SC.912.E.7.9: Cite evidence that the ocean has had a significant influence on climate change by absorbing, storing, and moving heat, carbon, and water.
Objectives:
Explain that Earth’s climate, geological activity, and life forms may be traced and compared.
Essential Vocabulary:
Climate: weather conditions of a region (temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds) throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.
Fossils (from Latin fossus, literally "having been dug up"): are the preserved remains of animals, plants, and other organisms from the past. Fossils are only found in sedimentary rock.
Carbon Dioxide (chemical formula CO2): a gas released by burning fossil fuels and other processes
Enrichment:
Chemistry Enrichment: CO2 is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom.
Biology enrichment: Carbon dioxide is used by plants during photosynthesis to make sugars
Modeled Instruction (Reading passage):
Essential Question:
- How did the fossil of a tropical turtle end up frozen in the Canadian Arctic?
Related Benchmarks:
- SC.912.E.7.9: Cite evidence that the ocean has had a significant influence on climate change by absorbing, storing, and moving heat, carbon, and water.
Objectives:
- Explain that Earth’s climate, geological activity, and life forms may be traced and compared.
Essential Vocabulary:
- Climate: weather conditions of a region (temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds) throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.
- Fossils (from Latin fossus, literally "having been dug up"): are the preserved remains of animals, plants, and other organisms from the past. Fossils are only found in sedimentary rock.
- Carbon Dioxide (chemical formula CO2): a gas released by burning fossil fuels and other processes
Enrichment:
- Chemistry Enrichment: CO2 is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom.
- Biology enrichment: Carbon dioxide is used by plants during photosynthesis to make sugars
Modeled Instruction (Reading passage):
A tropical turtle fossil recently discovered in the Canadian Arctic is giving scientists a look into an ancient, carbon-dioxide-warmed world.
Ninety million years ago, the Arctic Ocean was warm and ice-free year-round. Runoff from rivers could have created a lake of freshwater that stayed on top of the dense, salty Arctic Ocean, providing a route for freshwater species like the tropical turtle
Scientists found the tropical turtle on an island just west of Greenland. An underwater volcanic mountain range extends to the north of the island, and if some peaks of the Alpha Ridge poked above the ocean’s surface 90 million years ago, tropical turtle could have island-hopped from Eurasia to Canada.
The same volcanism that created those islands may have combined with massive eruptions around the globe that rapidly pumped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, warming the Earth and creating a tropical climate.
Models suggest there may have been 16 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there was just before the Industrial Revolution. While we’re nowhere near those numbers now the Earth of tropical turtle shows what a much hotter climate would look like.
These findings helped reveal that the Earth was a very different place in tropical turtle’s time. It was a hothouse, with diverse reptile communities living above the Arctic Circle while ferns and palms thrived near the South Pole.
Guided Practice: Teacher-Led Question and Answer, Student Accountable Talk
- What does this mean? Earth’s climate is constantly changing, even if only slowly. This is a fact that can proved with the scientific method
- What surprised you? That areas that are cold now, used to be hot and vice versa
- Why is observing climate change difficult? The evidence is often destroyed (igneous rock, volcanic activity, superposition); the data can be hard to gather (incomplete, massive timescale, lack of technology and/or money and interest; there is nothing to compare it to (no other Earth to use as a control)
- What can we do with this information? Understand that climate change is always occurring but difficult to measure from human perspective (massive timescale); understand that certain animals cannot adapt to new climate conditions (they may be isolated or lose food source and die); understand the interplay between the atmosphere (lots of CO2), the hydrosphere (freshwater on top of salt), and the biosphere (tropical turtle traveling to new places)
Independent Practice:
In groups of 3-5 students, have students discuss: Imagine and predict what fossils could possibly be found in Florida in hundreds of thousands of years if the climate turns colder? Each group will each choose one representative to report to the group’s findings to the class. Encourage groups to question each other’s assertions, and explain that this is peer review. Assertions should be supported by fact(s) related to tropical turtle |
