Description
- Title: Paleobotany – Climate Change Past and Present
- Air Date: June 5, 2014
- Series: Smithsonian Science How webcasts, which are designed to connect natural history science and research to upper-elementary and middle-school students.
This video features Dr. Scott Wing, a paleobotanist at the National Museum of Natural History. See what he found in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming that was worth eleven years of searching. Join him in interpreting the climate record from fossilized leaves and other clues. Explore how plant communities have changed in response to global climate changes. Understand today's warming of our planet in a geological context.
Teaching Resources
Reading Climate Change from Fossil Leaves
National Middle School Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
Earth Science
MS-ESS3 Earth and Human Activity
- MS-ESS3-5: Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
Life Science
MS-LS4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
- MS-LS4-1: Analyze and interpret data for patterns in the fossil record that document the existence, diversity, extinction, and change of life forms throughout the history of life on Earth under the assumption that natural laws operate today as in the past.
- MS-LS4-2: Apply scientific ideas to construct an explanation for the anatomical similarities and differences among modern organisms and between modern and fossil organisms to infer evolutionary relationships.
- MS-LS4-4: Construct an explanation based on evidence that describes how genetic variations of traits in a population increase some individuals' probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.
- MS-LS4-6: Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.
