NSEP Rising Stars: The Great Dying Lab 13-15 Day 2
Welcome back, Deep Time Lab.
Yesterday: field and classification. Today: deep dive into one Permian creature, speculate, connect to careers, present.
By the end of today: you'll have become your group's expert on one Permian creature, sketched it alive with reasoning from real anatomy, met the careers that work this rock, and presented your case.
Your casts are fully cured overnight. Your notebooks are full. Time for the deep dive.
- What's stratigraphy? (Reading rock layers. Deeper = older.)
- What's a synapsid? (The group Dimetrodon is in. Closer to mammals than reptiles.)
- What ended the Permian world? (The Great Dying. Siberian volcanism. 252 mya.)
- What's the connection between Permian fossils and the oil industry? (Same rock. Dead Permian sea creatures → 270 million years of pressure → oil.)
Pick up your clay cast from yesterday's drying tray. Hard as rock now. That's the same hardening process real fossils undergo — just compressed into a single overnight.
Check the inscription you made yesterday — legible? Your cast is now a labeled museum-style specimen. Set on your station; you'll paint and tag after lunch.
Your group gets assigned ONE creature from the Permian Six. You become the experts. You'll defend your interpretation during Specimen Review.
Groups draw assignments from the Permian Six. Open notebook page 4 and read the reference card together. Locate any Real Fossil Lab specimens that relate to your creature.
Use notebook page 10: Creature Deep Dive to document:
- Skeleton: what bones, what was unusual?
- Diet: what did it eat, how do we know?
- Habitat: where did it live, what was the ecosystem?
- Behavior: hunter/scavenger/herd? How do we infer from skeletal evidence?
- What we DON'T know: name the uncertainty.
Prepare a 1-minute "what we learned" pitch for Specimen Review. The Speculative Paleo Sketch (next block) will be of YOUR assigned creature.
This block sets up Speculative Paleo. The better your research now, the more grounded your sketch later.
Now you reason from the skeleton outward to the living creature. This is the headline project of the workshop.
Grab the Speculative Paleontology Sketch handout. Six prompts. Each answer needs a reason from the skeleton.
Fill in the prompts on the handout. Reason from the skeleton.
- Color — why?
- Skin / scales / fur / feathers — evidence?
- Diet — what does the skull/jaw suggest?
- Movement — leg length, build, foot shape?
- Sound — what sound did it make?
- Habitat — sea floor? shore? open water? swamp?
Rough sketch. Place the features. Get the proportions roughly right.
Full creature illustration. Colored pencils. Full body. Show it in its environment.
We've been doing this work for a day and a half. Now: who does this for a living? And how do you become one of them?
Discussion: What surprised you? What questions do you have?
Same rock as the paleontologists. Different question being asked. Different paycheck.
From the Career Card Deck, pick ONE you want to learn more about. Go to Career Interest (notebook page 12) and fill in: what attracts you, the education path, your first steps (this month / this year / after HS / in 5 years).
- What attracts you about it?
- What education path does it take?
- What would your first step be?
Then share with your group: which career and why?
You're sitting at NMJC right now. NMJC has programs that feed into petroleum technology, environmental science, and pre-engineering. Two careers in your deck have direct pathways from here.
Paleontology routes go through 4-year geology programs — UT-Austin, UNM, NMSU, and beyond. You're here today. That's step one.
Earth tones for museum realism (brown, tan, rust, gray). Or bold colors if you want a statement. Your call. Set aside to dry.
Use your Field Specimen Tag (the printable already tied to your take-home bag with twine). Fill in:
- Specimen name (real species or invented)
- Date collected
- Location: Hobbs, NM / Permian Basin
- Stratum: top / middle / bottom
- Classification: vertebrate or invertebrate? marine or land?
- Collector: your name
- Catalog #: group-assigned (e.g., DTL-2026-003)
Tape the tag to your painted clay cast.
Go to Final Case Report (notebook page 13) and file your report:
- Your top 3 finds
- Permian Hobbs — what was it like 270 mya? (1–2 paragraphs)
- What ended it? (What do we know about The Great Dying?)
- Career interest — which one, why?
Each group presents to the class. ~2 minutes per group. Show your cast and your speculative paleo sketch.
- "We are Group [#]. Our Permian creature is [name]."
- Skeleton evidence: "We know because [3 specific reasons]."
- Speculative reconstruction: "We sketched it as [color/build/diet/movement]. Our reasoning: [evidence]."
- Top find: "Our team's most interesting fossil was [name], classified as [category]."
- Career: "One of us is interested in [career] because [reason]."
Split the talk between teammates. One person handles intro + evidence. Another handles speculation + career. You're a lab, not a soloist.
You earned this.
- Painted clay specimen cast with specimen tag
- Real fossils you excavated — bagged from the dig, yours to keep
- Deep Time Lab Field Notebook — 2 days of work, case logs, classifications, career notes, final report
- Speculative Paleontology Sketch
- Field Specimen Tag tied to the bag with twine
- Glow-in-the-dark fossil egg — mystery specimen inside. Crack open at home.
Chisel and dust included. Crack open outdoors or over a sink — the egg shell is messy. Leave in sun for 10 min to charge the glow.
"You're a paleontology lab now. You know how to read time in rock. You know what lived under Hobbs 270 million years ago. You know how dead sea creatures power your town. And you know that there are real careers in this work — some of them with pathways right here at NMJC."
"Don't lose the notebook. Don't lose the sketch. Next time you drive past an oil rig — remember what's actually down there."