Foraminifera and Changing Sea Levels

Materials / Preparation

• One computer with internet access and a printer
• Print a Finding Ancient Beaches worksheet for each student.

Grouping

Groups of two

Teacher tips

Teachers, and highly advanced students, should read the following website: Foram Facts for background information on foraminifera.

We have provided an Answer sheet to Finding Ancient Beaches.

Procedure

1. Review fossil formation by asking students to discuss what they learned in the previous day’s activity. Tell students that they will be using some actual data from the fossils of single-celled organisms (protists) called Foraminifera – "forams" for short. These forams secrete a shell and when the forams die, the shells remain and may well become fossils. Their fossils can give us a lot of information because forams are very fussy about where they live, preferring particular water depths and temperatures. The particular forams they will be studying are benthic, which means they live on the ocean floor.
2. Hand out the Finding Ancient Beaches worksheet. As you introduce this activity have the students note where the samples in the study were taken, and form a hypothesis of how these marine animals were deposited in an area where there is no sea currently. Review the directions with the students. You may want to do one or two examples as a class before students work together in pairs to complete the activity.
3. Once students have completed the activity, review their findings as a class. "What does this tell us about sea level 6 million years ago?"
4. Tell students “Forams not only live at certain depths, as we found out today, but some of them also develop different physical characteristics depending on the temperature of the ocean. How might this information be useful for us to investigate in order to further support our hypotheses about sea level change? Why or why not?” Have students think of the connections between the temperature of the ocean, global temperatures, and melting of continental ice.

Extensions

For advanced students, encourage them to read the following website: Foram Facts, which can be accessed directly from the Global Ups and Downs Student Web Page.

Resources used

Foram Facts
http://www.teachingboxes.org/catalog.jsp?id=DLESE-000-000-004-888