Lesson 4: Fossils, Evolution, and Environmental Change

-How do fossils provide evidence for evolution?

-How do species change over long periods of time?

-What patterns in fossils show environmental change?

-How do scientists use fossil records to reconstruct ecosystems?

-How do environmental changes influence evolution?

-Evolution

-Adaptation

-Extinction

-Transitional fossil

-Fossil record

-Biodiversity

-Natural selection

-Paleoenvironment

-Speciation

HS-LS4-1 – Construct explanations based on fossil evidence that species evolve over time.

HS-LS4-5 – Analyze fossil data to identify patterns in the history of life.

HS-ESS1-4 – Use fossil evidence to explain changes in Earth’s history.

NGSS Crosscutting Concepts

-Patterns

-Cause and Effect

-Stability and Change

-Students will analyze fossil sequences to identify evolutionary change.

-Students will interpret data sets showing changes in biodiversity over time.

-Students will construct evidence-based explanations of environmental change.

Students will examine fossil evidence to understand how life on Earth has changed over time. Students will analyze patterns in fossil records to infer evolutionary relationships and environmental shifts.

Activities may include:

-Fossil sequence analysis

-Evolution timeline construction

-Comparing fossil assemblages across time periods

-Interpreting environmental change from fossil data

Purpose: Use fossil evidence to explain biological evolution and environmental change over geologic time

DOK Level: 3–4 – Strategic Thinking to Extended Thinking

-Paleontology and evolutionary science careers

-Understanding biodiversity and conservation today

-Connections between extinction events and modern environmental change

-Evolution happens within a single lifetime

-All species evolve at the same rate

-Extinction means failure rather than environmental change

-Fossils show complete evolutionary records

-Chunked fossil datasets

-Visual evolution trees

-Guided CER writing supports

-Group analysis of fossil evidence

-Structured sentence frames for explanations

-Fossil evidence analysis

-CER writing on evolution

-Data interpretation tasks

-Exit tickets on environmental change

-Fossil datasets

-Evolution charts

-Environmental reconstructions

-Scientific articles or case studies