WHO LIVED WITH WHOM? A DEEP TIME SORTING ACTIVITY

Deep time is one of the fundamental concepts in geology, biology and climate change but it is seldom broached in schools or in informal learning institutions. After noticing that most non-specialists have very limited and often flawed ideas about the evolution of life and relative spans of existence for most organisms, I created a hands-on activity that can be either facilitated or explored without a guide to be used in the Rutgers Geology Museum. The two versions of this activity, each focus on one of the main exhibits in the museum, the mastodon and coelophysis. Participants are asked to sort pictures of animals of various time periods, geographic areas and biologic groups into those that lived at the same time as the focus animal (mastodon and coelophysis) and those that did not.

Upon completion, participants were given a Gantt chart representing a comparison of when the animals included in the sorting activity actually lived in relation to each other. Generally people, both adults and children, were surprised with the discrepancies between their results and those on the chart and showed some common misconceptions when sorting the animals. However, upon seeing the chart, most people seemed to rethink their reasoning and physically correct the sorting decisions they made. The idea of this activity is not to give absolute time to the life-spans of the animals, but rather encourage participants to start creating a sense of order in their own minds as they encounter references to some of these animals or even other animals both in the museum and in the future.