Students have probably already studied dinosaurs in school, but they may not have learned much about the process by which paleontologists locate, excavate, and study dinosaurs. This lesson asks them to find out about this process and to write journal entries pretending they are on a dinosaur dig.

Geography, science

Standard 17: "How to apply geography to interpret the past"

Three hours

• Computer with Internet access
• Wall map of Africa or the world
• Writing materials

Students will

• read about Jobaria and make fact sheets about this recently discovered dinosaur;
• place Jobaria into a timeline to indicate the periods in which it lived;
• visit a Web site to learn about the steps involved in finding and excavating dinosaur fossils, then list these steps and explain their importance;
• describe what the bones in an interactive Jobaria skeleton indicate about this dinosaur;
• view pictures of a trip that Chicago teenagers took to Montana to look for dinosaur fossils; and
• write journal entries pretending they are on a fossil dig.

Ask students if they have heard of paleontology. What does a paleontologist do? Explain that a paleontologist is a person who finds and studies fossils, such as dinosaur fossils.

Inform the class that since they probably already know a good deal about different types of dinosaurs, this lesson will help them learn how dinosaur fossils are discovered and restored in order to be studied and displayed in museums.

Tell students that Paul Sereno is a famous paleontologist who has discovered several new species of dinosaur in Africa and South America. They will be learning about his most recent dinosaur discovery, Jobaria tiguidensis, which he found in west Africa. Point out the country of Niger on a map so students can see where Jobaria was discovered.

Have students read about Jobaria. First have them look at the Stat Sheet. Ask students to make their own Jobaria fact sheets with sketches of the dinosaur and the same list of facts they find at this online Stat Sheet. Have them also look at the National Geographic announcement of the Jobaria find.

Make a timeline on the board showing the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous geological periods. Ask students which period the Jobaria falls into, and have one of them draw a picture of Jobaria on the board. What other dinosaurs with which they are familiar look similar to Jobaria? Tell them that Jobaria is in the sauropod family, as are Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, dinosaurs they may have already studied. Students can learn a little bit more about these times at ZoomDinosaurs.com and the University of California at Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology site.

Ask students what they think it would have been like to have been with Sereno in Niger participating on the search and excavation of Jobaria. Ask them to explore Building a Dino to find out the necessary steps in this process. As they explore these links, have them list each of the steps and write one or two sentences describing why each one is necessary. This can be done in small groups, pairs, or individually.

Have students link to the Interactive Skeleton. Ask them to imagine that they are on the dig with Sereno and are in the process of finding some of these important bones. Have each student or group choose four or five of these bones. Ask them to click on each bone and to draw a picture of it and explain in a caption what this bone reveals about Jobaria. For example, the neck vertebrae indicate that Jobaria had relatively short vertebrae for a sauropod and that it had only 12, as opposed to 19 in some other sauropods.

Tell the class that Sereno sponsors a program that allows Chicago teenagers to go on digs in Montana. Have them look at the pictures of the 1999 Junior Paleontologist expedition. Ask them to look particularly closely at the pictures showing students doing the actual field work. After they have looked at these pictures, ask students if they think this trip looks like something they would enjoy. Why or why not? (Make sure students realize that this dig took place in Montana and not in Niger, where Sereno discovered Jobaria.)

Ask students to pretend they are on a fossil dig in an area that contains numerous dinosaur fossils. Have them write journal entries describing a productive day in the field. Their entries should explain the process by which they looked for fossils, what they did and said when they found a fossil, and the types of bones they found. They can imagine they have located a Jobaria skeleton or the bones of another type of dinosaur, but if they choose to use another dinosaur, they will need to conduct research on its bones to find out what they'd be digging up.

• Ask students to name, without looking at their notes or the computer, the steps that must be taken once they have found a new dinosaur fossil. Have them describe in a class discussion why each of these steps is important and what might happen if one of these steps were forgotten.
  
  
• Have students conduct research to find out what other species (dinosaur and non-dinosaur) lived at the same time as Jobaria. Ask them to describe these other species' geographic ranges and bone structures, and then write journal entries pretending they have discovered one of these species alongside a Jobaria fossil.
  
  
• Have students read through the pages at "Jobaria and the Elephant" to see how Sereno and his team used an elephant as a model to see how Jobaria may have moved. Ask them to explain why an elephant, rather than another animal, was chosen and what Sereno learned about Jobaria from studying the elephant.

National Geographic: DinoQuest
National Geographic: Dinosaurs of the Sahara
Project Exploration: Jobaria
University of California, Berkeley: Museum of Paleontology—The Cretaceous Period
ZoomDinosaurs.com: The Cretaceous Period