UNDERSTANDING ICHNOLOGY: INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHING TRACKING AND TRACKWAY ANALYSIS

Over the past two summers the authors have developed and refined a highly interactive course teaching tracking and trackway analysis. The three-week course is part of the University of Wyoming's High School Summer Institute, a summer program for high school sophomores from across the State of Wyoming. The activities have been successfully used to teach high school sophomores, but could be easily adapted for use with older or younger students. The activities are all meant to teach basic observational and analytical techniques in vertebrae ichnology and to develop critical thinking skills associated with making interpretations in scientific studies.

Some of the more successful activities include:

Derivation of Equations. Students make simple measurements on themselves and selected museum skeletons and trackways. Using this data they are able to derive equations that predict the height of a trackmaker based on the length of a footprint, as well as the speed of the trackmaker using only measurements from a trackway. These calculations are then compared with established ichnological formulas.

Urban “Fossil” Trackways. Concrete sidewalks preserve a wide variety of trace “fossils” such as tracks, leaf impressions, and graffiti. Students search for, discover, map, measure, and analyze the impressions in the sidewalks. Later, students use these same techniques to study actual dinosaur trackways in the field.

Painted Trackway Creation/Interpretation. Using water-based paints on their feet and hands students work in small groups to create painted trackways on long rolls of paper. Each group determines what actions or interactions to use in creating their trackways. Other groups then try to describe how the tracks were made after analyzing the painted trackways. Differences in observations and interpretations are discussed.

Observation of “Dinosaur” Trackmakers. Emus are large, extant, flightless birds whose footprints show strong similarities to pes impressions of ancient, theropod dinosaurs. A trip to a local emu ranch provides an opportunity for students to “travel back in time” and make observations of a living “dinosaur” making tracks. Students discuss what can and cannot be known from the fossil record.