Classroom Resources

This activity explores the concepts and research presented in the short film Out of the Ashes: Dawn of the Age of Mammals, which explores how life on Earth recovered after a major asteroid impact.

This film explores how life recovered after an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs and how those events shaped the diversity of plants and mammals on Earth today.

This activity explores images of anole lizards subjected to strong winds, which serve as phenomena for learning about natural selection and the impacts of extreme climate events.

This activity guides the analysis of a published scientific figure from a study that investigated how anole lizards may adapt to extremely cold temperatures.

Several questions are embedded within the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died, which tells the story of the scientific quest to explain one of the greatest, long-standing scientific mysteries: the sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period.

This interactive module allows students to examine fossils of fish, tetrapods (four-limbed animals), and their transitional forms.

This activity reinforces concepts presented in the short film The Making of a Theory. Using a map of the Malay Archipelago and information about the animals found on different islands, students discover the Wallace Line: a sharp boundary that separates distinct Asian and Australian fauna.

This activity explores the concepts and research presented in the short film Great Transitions: The Origin of Tetrapods. The film describes the discovery of Tiktaalik, a key fossil that illuminates the evolutionary history of four-legged animals.

This film tells the story of the scientific quest to explain one of the greatest, long-standing scientific mysteries: the sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period.

This interactive module explores key events in the record of life on Earth, which stretches over three billion years.

In this video, Tyler Lyson describes and demonstrates how he and other paleontologists uncover fossils from prehistoric animals, including dinosaurs.

This activity supports concepts covered in the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died. Students analyze graphs and data on pollen grains and fern spores to form a picture of the living landscape before and after the mass extinction that marked the end of the age of the dinosaurs.