Staff from the University of West Alabama, including the Black Belt Museum and Natural Sciences and Math Division (James Lamb, Andy Rindsberg) , and the Geological Survey of Alabama (David Kopaska-Merkel) conducted the 20th Annual Teacher Fossil Workshop on October 15. The workshop is an opportunity for earth science teachers to gain real-world field experience from professionals in the earth science field. Teachers complete a lesson plan and take the experience back to the classroom, along with credit towards contnuing ed. Most years the workshop takes place outdoors and involves fossil collecting at an active research site of museum staff.

This years workshop was moved indoors due to inclement weather. Twenty eight students along with the three instructors, plus five volunteers from the Birmingham Paleontological Society met at the ALFA Center and conducted an excercise in paleoenvironmental reconstruction using rock samples from the Early Eocene ~ 55 million years ago. Participants picked out shells from samples of the rock, then identified them using published references. The environmental preferences of each fossil species was then plotted using data from living relatives and comparision to other fossil sites, as an example of how paleoenvironmental reconstructions are accomplished. 

Click here (this is a two-page pdf file) to  read about how you will be contacted to respond to the CENSUS.