we learned Dinosaur Sign Language!!!
specifically, we learned facts about the velociraptor...it was not a very big dinosaur and it used its long, curved claws on its hind feet to slash and jab its prey.
and sign language for velociraptor is hooking one finger by your foot.
our next dinosaur was tyrannosaurus, which means lizard king. he was a 40 foot long meat eater with long teeth and stubby arms.
here is a picture of what a tyrannosaurus' teeth would have looked like. the longer one shows how long the roots would have been.
sign language for a tyrannosaurus is holding your arms close to your body because of its stubby arms and holding up two fingers on each hand.
next was the iguanadon. this dinosaur was named after the iguana because scientists recognized they had similar teeth. this plant eater was about 30 feet long.
sign language for the iguanadon is holding up a thumb because of the iguanadon's long spike on their thumbs.
next we learned about the triceratops. the triceratops was about 30 feet long and weighed 5 tons. it had three horns on its head.
sign language for triceratops is holding up your thumb and 2 fingers and placing them on your forehead.
and lastly, we learned about the allosaurus. the allosaurus was a common meat eating predator with bony ridges on the back of its head.
sign language for allosaurus is holding up your fingers at the back of your head.
we also learned a lot about extinct sharks this week. Ms. Rosa told us that black shark teeth we may find washed up at the beach or in creeks are from extinct sharks bc they have absorbed the minerals surrounding it and have turned black. white shark teeth are new teeth.
this is the jaw of a bull shark.
you can see here its rows of teeth. sharks are constantly losing their teeth, so when one is lost another pops forward in its place in about a day's time.
then each student was given a plate of matrix (a mass of fine-grained rock in which gems, crystals, or fossils are embedded). they used a tool to sort through to find shark teeth, shells, etc...
a fish tooth
the students also got to be paleontologists this week. they were able to dig away dirt to find a dinosaur skeleton buried inside!
we celebrated William's 4th birthday this week, too!
he is definitely one in a minion!
and we also celebrated Miss Gina's birthday this week.
we discussed stratigraphy which is the study of sediment strata, or layers. over time, natural processes such as mudslides, flooding, and erosion deposit dirt and sand on top of the ground. layers and layers of sediment pile up on each other over thousands of years. these changes are visible to archaeologists, allowing them to observe the strata in an archaeological dig. a good example of stratigraphy can be seen in the Grand Canyon; the river has cut a path through the rock allowing you to see the different colored stripes up the canyon wall.
to help students better understand stratigraphy, Miss Gina and Miss Taylor made a archaeology layer cake!
the students “excavated” their dirt and worms with the spoon, removing one “layer” at a time- they uncovered M&Ms, jelly beans, and gummy worms which they enjoyed eating.
and there were even a few toys hidden in the bottom layer. :)
Friday, I was able to accompany a few of our older students to Moundville Archaeological Park in Moundville, Al. I haven't visited since I believe I was in middle school so I was extremely excited to finish up our archaeological unit with this trip!
here is a little history: "The Moundville site, occupied from around A.D. 1000 until A.D. 1450, is a large settlement of Mississippian culture on the Black Warrior River in central Alabama. At the time of Moundville’s heaviest residential population, the community took the form of a three hundred-acre village built on a bluff overlooking the river.
The plan of the town was roughly square and protected on three sides by a bastioned wooden palisade. Moundville, in size and complexity second only to the Cahokia site in Illinois, was at once a populous town, as well as a political center and a religious center.
Within the enclosure, surrounding a central plaza, were twenty-six earthen mounds, the larger ones apparently supporting noble’s residences alternating with small ones that supported buildings used for mortuary and other purposes.
Of the two largest mounds in the group, Mound A occupies the center of the great plaza, and Mound B lies just to the north on the site’s central axis. The latter is a steep pyramid with two ramps, rising to a height of fifty-eight feet. The arrangement of the mounds and plaza gives the impression of symmetry and planning. In addition, archaeologists have found evidence of borrow pits, other public buildings, and dozens of small houses constructed of pole and thatch, many of which have yielded burials beneath the floors.
Striking differences between the nobles and commoners showing a highly stratified society can be seen among the excavated burials with their grave goods. Some include rare artifacts that may be associated with particular political or religious offices. Evidence shows that Moundville was sustained by tribute of food and labor provided by the people who lived in the nearby Black Warrior Valley floodplain farmsteads as well as other smaller mound centers. At its height the Moundville community contained a population of about one thousand with around ten thousand in the entire valley. Like other Mississippian societies, Moundville’s growth and prosperity were made possible by intensive cultivation of maize, or Indian corn. The nobility dominated a traffic in such imported luxury goods as copper, mica, galena, and marine shell. Renowned particularly for their artistic excellence in pottery, stonework, and embossed copper, the inhabitants of Moundville produced artifacts bearing a high degree of skilled workmanship, making the site a benchmark in the study of Mississippian imagery.
Neither the rise of Moundville nor its eventual decline is well understood by scholars. The immediate area appears to have been thickly populated, containing a few very small single-mound centers just before the creation of the public architecture of the great plaza and erection of the palisade about A.D. 1200. However, by about A.D. 1350, Moundville seems to have undergone a change in use. The site lost the appearance of a town, but retained its ceremonial and political functions. A decline ensued, marked by abandonment of some mounds and the loss of religious importance in others. There was also a decrease in the importation of goods which had given prestige to the nobility. By the 1500s, most of the area was abandoned with only a few portions of the site still occupied. Although the first Europeans reached the Southeast in the 1540s, the precise ethnic and linguistic links between Moundville’s inhabitants and what became the historic Native American tribes are still not well understood.
Dr. Vernon James Knight, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama, is the Museum’s Curator of Southeastern Archaeology."
