Fossils B/C

[gvorwald]

Hi,

I saw your post about writing Fossils events. I am the National Supervisor for Fossils and would be happy to give you some tips.

In what capacity are you writing Fossils events? For tournaments, practice?

You can contact me directly at gvorwald@newyorkscioly.org

G Vorwald

[Booknerd]

Hey everyone! Booknerd here


For SSSS this summer, I wrote a guide for fossils. Since SSSS resources still aren't up yet, I thought I'd share this here.

I wrote this with people new to the event in mind, and a bulk of the guide goes over making a binder, which I found to be the most challenging part of the event when I first started. I go through what I've learned from my experience in fossils (yes, this means I'm spilling all my secrets )
You can find my guide here: https://scioly.org/summer/files/fossils ... notes1.pdf
If you have any questions, comments, or just want to say hi, feel free to send me a PM here on the forums, tag me on scioly.org chat, or just reply here.

I hope you find this helpful along your fossil journey this year!

[dchen22]

Does anyone have any tips for distinguishing between H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis?

[dchen22]

Alrighty here's how I see it:

file-20181203-194932-142btpd.jpg

They'd be real mean for giving you something facing straight on, but I know they do because they have to me before. If the writer is nice enough to give you a lower jaw, the mouth/jaw area is a bit lower on the face for Erectus, but the difference is very small and sometimes indeterminable. Sometimes the eye sockets appear smaller on Erectus as well. Hope thus helps some, but yeah this is one of the tougher IDs put there.

[DragonTownEpic]

Dang, that's really helpful!

[thegroundsloth]

Hi guys! I posted this practice test on the discord server and someone suggested that I post it on the wiki. I can't figure out how to put it on the test exchange page so I am uploading it here instead in the hopes that someone finds it useful. I have competed in fossils before but this is the first test I made so if you have any thoughts about it I would love to hear them
here are links to the pdfs:
test
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iIbQGA ... sp=sharing
answer key:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UJQE0k ... sp=sharing

[BennyTheJett]

Hey guys-

So if you don't know, I have a new fossils partner this year, who is getting better, but has a long ways to go to be where I want to be in the event. How do you guys think I should go about teaching her the different kinds of taxons. In other words, how should I put them into layman's terms? Also, do you think I'd be more advantaged to give her an image sheet for the organisms, or have her learn what they all look like, using a resource such as fossils bot?

Thanks for your advice,
~Benny


Also: In general since this thread is kinda dead, if you have questions about the event, I've been around for a while and could probably answer most of your questions quicker then the forums via my discord, BennyTheJett1#3979. You can just ping me on the scioly discord and I should respond fairly quickly.

[Booknerd]

Hey guys-

So if you don't know, I have a new fossils partner this year, who is getting better, but has a long ways to go to be where I want to be in the event. How do you guys think I should go about teaching her the different kinds of taxons. In other words, how should I put them into layman's terms? Also, do you think I'd be more advantaged to give her an image sheet for the organisms, or have her learn what they all look like, using a resource such as fossils bot?

Thanks for your advice,
~Benny


Also: In general since this thread is kinda dead, if you have questions about the even, I've been around for a while and could probably answer most of your questions quicker then the forums via my discord, BennyTheJett1#3979. You can just ping me on the scioly discord and I should respond fairly quickly.

I think an image sheet would be a better way to start. Having them look at all the different specimens at once on something like image sheet like you said or even just googling every fossil under google image search would probably be better to start with before going into using things like fossilbot. Fossilbot is really good for getting faster and better at id, but i don’t think someone can get very far unless they’ve already seen at least a couple pictures of each specimen.
But something I found that helped me get a pretty solid foundation in fossil id was going through a google image search for every fossil and pasting some particularly good images for each one on a doc (printing this out and adding it to a binder also can become really helpful for id during a test). But this is a tedious and time consuming process so it might not be the best for everyone.

[ritsuuu]

Hi, I'm competing for nationals this year and cramming notes! Once again... even though an AP exam about a course I've forgotten about this week is nearing... really, I'm finding any excuse to not study for them
So when making notes, I was wondering about the "paleoenvironment" sections. Especially for the dinosaurs. Has anyone seen a test where you had to list the paleoenvironment of the formation in which the fossil was found? For past competitors in the event, what was the main focus of the event? I know sometimes for orni it was just "Oh, identify the bird! What does it eat? *insert 1 random question that they obv ripped off the Cornell Lab of Ornithology pages*" But looking at the fossils tests, I'm really not sure about my notes and the fact that they all lack stuff on the paleoenvironment ;-;

[thegroundsloth]

Have you looked at old Princeton scioly tests? I seem to recall there being a few questions about paleoenvironment on those, but I could be remembering wrong. As for your notes I am not sure how much this will help, but maybe ask yourself How did the environment affect the lifestyle and evolution of [insert organism here] ? How has the climate changed through geologic time? And every time you cant give the answer jot it down in your binder. This might help with your dinosaur questions:
https://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G204/l ... orise.html