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Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized”: a New Board Game Designed to Teach College Undergraduate Students About the Process of Fossilization

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Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized”: a New Board Game Designed to Teach College Undergraduate Students About the Process of Fossilization Journal of Geoscience Education ISSN: 1089-9995 (Print) 2158-1428 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujge20 “Taphonomy: Dead and fossilized”: A new board game designed to teach college undergraduate students about the process of fossilization Rowan C. Martindale & Anna M. Weiss To cite this article: Rowan C. Martindale & Anna M. Weiss (2019): “Taphonomy: Dead and fossilized”: A new board game designed to teach college undergraduate students about the process of fossilization, Journal of Geoscience Education, DOI: 10.1080/10899995.2019.1693217 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2019.1693217 © 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC View supplementary material Published online: 02 Dec 2019. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ujge20 JOURNAL OF GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2019.1693217 “Taphonomy: Dead and fossilized”: A new board game designed to teach college undergraduate students about the process of fossilization à Rowan C. Martindale and Anna M. Weiss Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712 ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Incorporating games in teaching can help students retain material and become innovative Received 31 May 2019 problem solvers through engagement and enjoyment. Here we describe a new board game, Revised 30 October 2019 “Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized,” and its use as an active learning tool (material available at doi: Accepted 12 November 2019 10.18738/T8/NQV2CU). The educational objective is to teach the player about taphonomy and Published online 2 December 2019 fossilization, while the gameplay objective is to preserve and recover the best fossil collection. Through competitive gameplay, students learn how chemical, physical, and environmental factors, KEYWORDS as well as physiology and discovery biases can influence an organism’s preservation and collection Active learning; serious potential. The game is modeled after an Early Jurassic fossil deposit for scientific accuracy and game; taphonomy; relevance. The game was incorporated in undergraduate classroom activities in 20 colleges and paleontology; fossilization universities across the United States. Survey results show that students and teachers were over- whelmingly positive about the game, stating that it was fun and helped them learn or strengthen their knowledge of fossilization. When analyzed statistically, we find that students’ self-reported learning outcomes and opinions vary most significantly with college year, major, ethnicity, and race. White students and geoscience or STEM majors reported the highest levels of learning and enjoyment, with minorities and non-STEM majors responding less favorably. We suggest this game is most advantageous for use in upper-level paleontology classrooms, although it is still beneficial at lower levels. It is critical to use this game as part of a larger lesson plan and tailor it to fit the needs of an individual classroom. Modifications for time and class size, as well as follow-up discussion questions, are included. Introduction 2013), yet are rarely preserved outside of Lagerst€atten – deposits with extraordinarily detailed preservation of soft Purpose and learning goals tissues and other features not typically conserved (Seilacher, The process of fossilization is a cornerstone in the geological 1970; Seilacher et al., 1985). The fossil record is not history of life. Taphonomy is “the study of the transition a complete archive of past life, but taphonomic data informs (in all its details) of animal remains [now broadened to paleontologists about the information they have and the the remains of all organisms] from the biosphere into the information they are missing, which is critical to geoscientific lithosphere” (Efremov, 1940). In other words, taphonomic interpretations. processes include all modifications to an organism from its Taphonomic processes have received much attention by death through fossilization. These processes fundamentally paleontologists (e.g., Allison & Briggs, 1993; Briggs, 2003, alter the record of past life, resulting in biases and gaps in 2014; Muscente, Martindale, Schiffbauer, Creighton, & our knowledge of ancient organism physiology, ecology, and Bogan, 2019; Muscente et al., 2017; Seilacher, 1990); community structure (Briggs, 2003, 2014; Muscente et al., however, based on our experience and anecdotes from 2017). A particularly clear example of these biases is the colleagues, taphonomy can be a difficult concept for new record of soft tissues, such as feathers, integument, organs, geoscientists. The timescales and biogeochemical processes and non-biomineralized organisms (i.e., those without a involved in fossilization are often challenging for students shell or skeleton). Delicate or non-biomineralized organisms (Ault, 1984; Kortz & Murray, 2009), particularly if they are account for a significant proportion of marine animal not familiar with geological time, organism physiology, or biodiversity (Conway Morris, 1986; Schopf, 1978; Sperling, ecology. Fossilization is complex and involves factors such CONTACT Rowan C. Martindale [email protected] Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C1100, Austin, TX 78712, USA. à Current Address: Environmental Research Institute, University of Belize. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2019.1693217. ß 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4. 0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 2 R. C. MARTINDALE AND A. M. WEISS Figure 1. Schematic of the “Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized” board game and associated material, i.e., cards, GPS trackers, tokens, game board, game pieces, and organisms. as organism biology, local (micro)environment, global ocean In order to improve student understanding of fossiliza- chemistry, and both (re)mineralization and diagenesis more tion we designed a board game, “Taphonomy: Dead and broadly (Allison & Briggs, 1993; Briggs, 2003, 2014; Fossilized,” herein referred to as “the game” (Figure 1). Our Muscente et al., 2017; Seilacher, 1990; Seilacher et al., 1985). aim was to create a strategic game of medium complexity We have found that many students can find these factors to (e.g., Settlers of Catan) to teach players about taphonomic be abstract and the interplay between them overwhelming processes through competitive gameplay. The game is based and difficult to synthesize. These issues may be compounded on the Early Jurassic Ya Ha Tinda Lagerst€atte from Alberta, by a paucity of good classroom specimens; not every institu- Canada (Martindale, Them, Gill, Marroquın, & Knoll, 2017), tion has access to an extensive fossil collection with multiple which connects the player to real paleontological research. examples of different organisms preserved via different The board and environmental events are representative of taphonomic pathways. possible conditions in a Jurassic marine setting, and the JOURNAL OF GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION 0, 1–21 (2019) 3 Figure 2. Photographs of Ya Ha Tinda Lagerst€atte fossils with their associated game tokens. pieces represent the Ya Ha Tinda fossils (Figure 2) (e.g., student populations (Griggs et al., 2009; Manduca, 2007). Marroquın, Martindale, & Fuchs, 2018; Martindale et al., Innovative techniques implemented in geoscience classrooms 2017; Martindale & Aberhan, 2017; Maxwell & Martindale, include poetry, mnemonics, cartoons, and card games to 2017). Although there are some simplifications for gameplay, teach mineralogy (Rule, 2003; Rule & Auge, 2005; Rule, the game closely follows the stages of fossilization (e.g., Carnicelli, & Kane, 2004; Spandler, 2016), phone or com- organism death, alteration, extraction) that one might expect puter “apps” (applications) that combine geological data in a marine environment to maximize scientific accuracy and/or virtual field trips with kinesthetic learning (e.g., Muscente et al., 2019). The game leverages the advan- (Arrowsmith, Counihan, & McGreevy, 2005; Bursztyn, tages of active, hands-on learning to lead players through Shelton, Walker, & Pederson, 2017; Bursztyn, Walker, the process of fossilization as well as examples of stochastic Shelton, & Pederson, 2017; Gutierrez & Bursztyn, 2019; factors and biases in collection. Ultimately, the player fin- Stainfield, Fisher, Ford, & Solem, 2000), incorporating data- ishes the game with a more concrete understanding of fossil- bases into class activities (e.g., Cohen, Lockwood, & Peters, ization processes because gameplay has guided them 2018; Lockwood, Cohen, Uhen, & Ryker, 2018), or designing through each different phase of the process. courses to be primarily active learning (e.g., Clapham, 2018; Upon successful completion of the board game without Olcott, 2018). No matter the innovation, increasing student modification, the player will be able to: engagement leads to improved comprehension of core con- cepts and material
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