NSEP Rising Stars: The Great Dying Lab 13-15 Day 1
Welcome, Deep Time Lab.
You live on the most studied geological formation in North America. Today, you're going to read 270 million years of time written into the rock directly under this building.
By the end of today: you'll have excavated a stratified dig site, classified your finds, cast a fossil in plaster, and started building your speculative paleontology project for tomorrow.
Hobbs sits on the Permian Basin — one of the most studied geological formations in North America, and the most productive oil-and-gas region in the U.S.
270 million years ago, this place was a shallow tropical sea. The creatures that lived — and died — here became two things:
- The fossils we'll dig up today
- The oil that runs your town
The Permian Timeline:
- 299 mya — Permian period begins. Hobbs underwater. Supercontinent Pangaea.
- 270 mya — Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus, trilobites, ammonites alive here.
- 252 mya — The Great Dying. Massive Siberian volcanism. Ocean acidification. 96% of marine species extinct.
- 230 mya — Dinosaurs FINALLY evolve in the recovery period.
- 66 mya — Dinosaurs die out (different extinction, asteroid).
- Today — us. NMJC. The oil rigs. This workshop.
What's the connection between extinct sea creatures and a gas pump?
Real paleontologists follow a workflow. Today, so do you.
- Locate — find a site
- Document — sketch, record conditions
- Excavate — slowly, layer by layer
- Classify — what is each find?
- Cast — preserve a copy
- Reconstruct — full picture from partial evidence
- Interpret — what does it tell us?
Today: steps 1–5. Tomorrow: 6–7.
Grab your Deep Time Lab Field Notebook. You keep it. It comes home with you. It's the most important tool you have today.
- 🖌️ Brush — like a paleontologist's soft horsehair brush
- 🤏 Tweezers — analog for an awl or pick
- 🔍 Magnifying glass — hand lens; real paleontologists wear these on lanyards
- 📓 Field notebook — the most important tool
- Time + date
- Grid coordinate (your bin is divided into A1–D4)
- Depth (top / middle / bottom layer)
- Description — size, shape, color, texture
- Sketch — rough drawing, doesn't need to be art
Get to your group. Find your bin. Tools out. Notebook open. Bin Grid Map taped to the side.
- Top — plain sand. Gems, polished stones.
- Middle — colored sand. Mid-sized fossils, fossil sand mix.
- Bottom — darker sand. The biggest finds — the most ancient.
Deeper = older. Real stratigraphy. The deeper you go, the further back in time.
Brush the top sand. Surface finds — mostly gems, polished stones. Document every find: time, grid coordinate, depth ("top"), description, sketch.
Teacher calls "Middle layer." Go down into the colored sand. Mid-sized plaster fossils + fossil sand mix.
Mark each find as "middle" in your notebook.
"Bottom layer." Darkest sand. The biggest, most dramatic plaster fossils. Mark "bottom" in your notebook.
- Sand stays in the bin. Spill = 60-second pause.
- Document before you remove.
- One person digs per quadrant at a time. Rotate.
- Brush, never poke.
Bring finds + notebook + grid map to the lab tables.
- Vertebrate — had a backbone (you, fish, Dimetrodon)
- Invertebrate — no backbone (bugs, clams, trilobites)
- Marine — lived in the ocean
- Land — lived on dry ground
- Synapsid — the group Dimetrodon belongs to. Not a dinosaur. Not a reptile. Closer to mammals than either.
| 🌊 Marine | 🌵 Land | |
|---|---|---|
| 🦴 Vertebrate | Helicoprion (shark) | Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus (synapsids) |
| 🐚 Invertebrate | Trilobite, Ammonite, Brachiopod | (rare in Permian) |
Use notebook page 4 (The Permian Six) + page 7 (Quick Fossil ID) as your reference. Log each find in your Sample Inventory (page 7): grid square, layer, best guess, notes.
In your Sample Inventory notes column (page 7), tag each find with category: Vertebrate or Invertebrate, Marine or Land. As a group: what did you find at top vs. middle vs. bottom? Any pattern?
- Are deeper finds different categories than surface finds?
- What might that mean about the environment 270 mya vs. more recently?
Each group reports out: what came from each layer?
Teacher builds a class chart on the board. We look for patterns.
Each group gets a deck of 6 career cards. Flip through them:
- Paleontologist
- Petroleum Geologist
- Environmental Scientist
- Paleo-Artist
- Museum Curator
- Geological Surveyor
Discussion question: Two careers in this deck pull paychecks from the same rock under our feet. Which two? Why?
Real paleontologists cast specimens to preserve them — the cast is what gets studied; the original goes in storage. Today, you use the same museum technique: silicone mold + casting material.
In a real museum the casting material might be epoxy, resin, or specialized plaster. We're using air-dry clay — same workflow, faster cure.
Pick a shape from the silicone mold tray. Take your portion of clay.
Press clay INTO the mold cavity. Pack every corner — legs, head, fine detail. Underfilled cavities = lost detail. Real museum technique.
Flex the silicone gently and peel the cast out. Set it on your labeled paper plate.
Use your skewer to inscribe on the bottom of the cast: initials + classification + year (e.g., "AB · syn · 2026"). Air-dries to museum hardness overnight.
Skeletons don't tell us everything. They don't tell us:
- What color the creature was
- What its skin/scales/fur/feathers looked like
- What sound it made
- How it behaved — was it social? solitary? aggressive? camouflaged?
Famous example: T. rex used to be drawn as a smooth, scaly green lizard. Modern reconstructions often show feathers. The skeleton didn't change — the reasoning did.
Six prompts. You answer each with reasoning from the skeleton:
- Color — why?
- Skin / scales / fur / feathers — evidence?
- Diet — what does the skull suggest?
- Movement — build and leg length tell you what?
- Sound — speculate (it's allowed).
- Habitat — sea floor? shoreline? open water?
Then you sketch the creature in full color, in its environment.
Notebook check: review your entries from today. Did you log every find? Get the depths? Sketch the unusual ones?
- Pop your cast
- Skeleton Reconstruction Lab (with decoys)
- Speculative Paleontology Sketch
- Career Connection Block (paleontologist + petroleum geologist videos)
- Paint, tag, and present