Pop Up Paleontology Make Your Own Trace Fossil Activity

What you need  Model Magic, Play-Doh, or clay  Materials to leave traces in the Model Magic, like models or toys of ancient organisms  Provided coprolite example sheet

Preparation Follow the instructions to model a trace fossil.

Step 1. Gather the materials, either from the science kit Step 2. Create an impression of the toy in the Model Magic, or you got at the library or from around your home. shape the Model Magic to model a coprolite based upon the coprolite example sheet provided (last page). What to do Use the materials to create a model of a trace fossil, also called an “ichnofossil.” Leave the Model Magic (or clay) to dry for 24 hours; it will harden like a rock. Trace fossils indicate the behavior of ancient organisms. Examples of trace fossils include burrows, trackways, feeding marks, nests, and coprolites - which are fossilized feces!

Examples of body fossils What is happening? (image from studylib.net) Fossils are evidence of organisms that lived during a past geological age – a really long time ago! Fossils are the mineralized remains of long-dead organisms. What was once a living animal body has been turned into mineral, but the shape remains. What ends up getting fossilized is a tiny fraction of the past life on Earth, from microbes to dinosaurs and lots more!

Fossils fall into one of two categories: body fossils and trace fossils. Body fossils are parts of organisms that come directly from the body. Bones, claws, and teeth are all examples of body Examples of trace fossils (image from studylib.net)

fossils. Trace fossils indicate the activity of an organism, like a footprint or even fossilized feces (called coprolites). An organism made the trackway, feeding mark, or feces, but it is not a part of its body.

Trace fossils can tell us what animals ate, whether they moved in herds, whether they made burrows, and many other facts. As for plants, trace fossils can tell us whether insects or fungi attacked them (e.g., borings into wood). Trace fossils are important because they give paleontologists a bigger picture about how ancient organisms lived.

Trace Fossils in Kansas There are a variety of different trace fossils preserved in the rock layers of Kansas. In eastern Kansas, there are several well-known trace fossil sites that preserve invertebrate movement and feeding traces, as well as sites that preserve footprints from ancient vertebrates such as amphibian-like and mammal-like reptiles. Many of these sites in eastern Kansas date to the Carboniferous geologic period and represent a block of time from approximately 320 million years ago to 299 million years ago. In western Kansas, there are more vertebrate trace fossils, like shark feeding marks preserved on fossilized mosasaur bones as well as shark and other fish coprolites (fossilized scat). The rock layers in western Kansas are much younger, dating to the Cretaceous geologic period where they represent a block of time from about 145 million years ago to 66 million years ago. The images below highlight some examples of these ichnofossils.

[Image from Minter et al., 2016] [Image from Mangano et al., 1998] Insect resting trace fossil from Tonganoxie Sandstone Resting trace fossil attributed to a burrowing bivalve. of eastern Kansas; dates to the Carboniferous Period. This Carboniferous inchnofossil is from a shale deposit near the town of Waverly in eastern Kansas.

[Image from S. Godfrey, Calvert Marine Museum] [Image from Milan et al., 2016] Footprints from an ancient vertebrate (in this case, an Footprints from an ancient vertebrate (in early mammal-like reptile). This trackway site is located this case, a large amphibian-like reptile). near the town of Garnett in eastern Kansas. It dates This trackway site is preserved in the to the Carboniferous Period. Howard Limestone of eastern Kansas and dates to the Carboniferous Period.

[Image from Rothschild et al., 2004] [Image from Sternberg Museum of Natural History] Shark tooth impressions (feeding marks) on the fossilized tail vertebrae of a mosasaur. Coprolite (fossilized feces) from a shark that This specimen was found in the late 1890s in the Smoky Hill Member of the Niobrara lived in the Western Interior Seaway of Kansas Chalk in western Kansas. It dates to the Cretaceous Period. during the Cretaceous Period. This coprolite was found in the Smoky Hill Member of the Niobrara Chalk of western Kansas.

If you’d like to use your Model Magic or clay to shape your own coprolite, just choose from one of the example coprolite shapes below!