FOSSIL FINDERS: INVERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGICAL RESEARCH CARRIED OUT IN PARTNERSHIP WITH 5th TO 9th GRADE TEACHERS AND THEIR STUDENTS

The project "Fossil Finders" engages 5^th to 9^th grade teachers and their students in collecting data on faunal change in the Hamilton Group of central NY. The project involves a partnership between the Cornell Department of Education and the Paleontological Research Institution. The research goal is to track changes in fauna and paleoenvironmental proxies in a shallowing upward sequence of the Skaneateles Formation (Middle Devonian) near Pompey, NY. The pedagogical goals of the project are to improve teacher understanding of the nature of science and practice of inquiry-based teaching. The project also helps teachers enhance their teaching of fundamental Earth science concepts and of foundational concepts important for students' later understand of evolution. While the project is technically a teacher-student-scientist partnership rather than citizen science as conventionally defined, the project shares many of the same overarching pedagogical goals and data quality issues as citizen science projects. The work is supported by NSF DRL 0733233.

Teachers in the project visit Ithaca, NY for a week in two consecutive summers. In year one teachers learn both pedagogy and sufficient content to implement the curriculum and data collection in their classroom. In year two, teachers reflect on their previous year experiences, and work in teams on small open-ended field research projects that relate to the Fossil Finders project. Teachers are supported throughout the year by Fossil Finders project staff.

Students are trained to collect data by their teachers. Specimen data collected by students includes higher taxonomic level, size and fragmentation, and color of rock. Students input their data into an online database, from which students can create plots of data to allow them to explore the sample they investigated, compare their sample to samples studied by other classes, and look for trends in data through the sequence. After the first two years of the project, about 30 teachers have participated, contributing data for nearly 6000 specimens from seven stratigraphic horizons in the section. Data quality assessment shows noise in the data, but major trends in common taxa are robust. Common issues include students identifying fewer specimens than actually appear in the sample and a bias toward reporting larger specimens.