Fossils B/C

[Kokonilly]

Good idea. Just be careful with a few of them since even scientific names can be deceiving. For example icthyosaurus is not a fish and basilosaurus is not a reptile. But in general knowing what names mean can be helpful.

Yes; Latin phrases are not to be used exclusively, but if you must guess, they would be amazingly useful. I have a year of Latin under my belt, which doesn't really help me with anything but SO...

[fossils808]

thanks everyone for the tips

how does the competion itself work? do we go to like stations or ?

Thanks!

[sciencegirl23]

They're pretty much always stations with around 2 mins for each.

[germinator]

thanks everyone for the tips

how does the competion itself work? do we go to like stations or ?

Thanks!

Except for one state test (6th grade) all of the tests I had were stations.
i.e. 2 minutes per station, 20-25 stations, etc
because of the small time allowed per station you should have a good binder w/ good organization so you dont spend half your time looking through the binder.

[lllazar]

Yes, tabs generally help, put all your pages in sheet protectors so that flipping through quickly doesn't tear pages.

[fossilgirl13]

thanks everyone for the tips

how does the competion itself work? do we go to like stations or ?

Thanks!

As most people said, it's about ~2 min per station, but I had one where there were about 16 stations, and you had 55 min to get as many of them done in that time; you could spend the entire time on one station if you wanted, but the other teams probably would have killed you...
(That was the only time that format was ever used in all my tests, so I wouldn't bet on that happening again)

[lllazar]

Can anyone explain to me the difference between mosasaur paddles and plesiosaur paddles? Google images is remarkably unreliable....i searched both types and got an image for plesiosaur paddle, and then got a strikingly similar image in the search for mosasaur paddles. Here they are:

Plesiosaur search:




Mosasaur search:



I call shenanigans.

[Bogoradwee]

Haha it looks like they just copied the top one, enlarged it, and changed the color of the rock

[paleonaps]

They ARE remarkably similar....
Remember that they evolved for the same purpose from similar structures. It seems to me that for a mosasaur the fingers are farther spaced apart, but I think the best thing to do is pray that you don't get it.

[lllazar]

Yes i was thinking along the exact same lines until i saw that one of them was a replica made for sale. And then i got the idea that maybe it was a plesiosaur paddle and the second one is a replica, but they thought it was a mosasaur paddle, so they named it as so. They are just so similar even in orientation that accounting for the fact that they were two very similar body parts in terms of function, it still seems impossible to believe they are of different genii.

But yes, honestly the tests mostly cover identification of invertebrates, as it is difficult to get numerous vertebrate fossils and also pictures can be vague at times, such as this one.