On Thursday, May 14, TESI Director and paleontologist Bruce MacFadden led 207 participants on a 360° virtual tour through the “Florida Fossils: Evolution of Life and Land” exhibit at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The exhibit spans 45 million years of Florida’s geological history and contains 500 fossils, many of which were discovered within 100 miles of Alachua County.
The event, presented by Scientist in Every Florida School in collaboration with the Florida Museum, used 360° virtual technology to provide K-12 students a uniquely realistic virtual field trip and opportunity to learn about the Florida fossil record. The program was part of a rapid-response effort by the SEFS team to provide virtual field trip opportunities for K-12 teachers and students across the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alberto López, the museum’s school outreach coordinator, navigated the virtual exhibit and provided opportunities for students to engage with the presentation. As the camera panned to a display featuring a small skeleton cowering before a larger predator, López gave students the opportunity to guess what kind of animal it was. MacFadden revealed that the fossil was an ancestor of today’s horses named the Parahippus, one of his personal favorites in the exhibit.
Other highlights that were featured included the Megalodon jaw, giant ground sloth, terror bird, and the Montbrook fossil dig site. The Montbrook dig site, located in nearby Levy county, is still an active research site that will be recruiting volunteers in the near future.
MacFadden concluded the tour with a hope that learning about Florida’s prehistoric fossil record would help attendees, “understand the changes in life and land that we call Florida today, and to hopefully better understand our place on Earth.”
To view K-12 resources to supplement this field trip, click here.
K-12 Science Standards covered in this virtual field trip: