Fossils B/C

[HippoLowercase]

Hey, does anyone know how to differentiate between coelophysis, and velociraptor? Any thoughts would help!

From my binder: "Coelophysis's skull is long, thin, and curves downward. Velociraptor's skull curves slightly upward,has a pronounced bump at the end of the snout. Coelophysis has three toes on each foot while Velociraptor has four toes on each foot."

Other people responded to my question with coelophysis having 4 toes on each foot while velociraptor having 3 toes. I just searched it and found that coelophysis has 3 long toes and 1 short one. For velociraptor, the result was 3 toes on each foot. Anyways, thanks for the help!

[Unome]

Platanus generally has differently shaped leaflets and (for lack of better words) a smaller "leaf angle"

The branching pattern of the veins is the most consistent identifier.

Can you explain how the branching patterns are different? Also, how is this image Platanus?

That image is not a good example - I'm not even certain whether that's actually Platanus. Acer has all of its main veins branch off at a single node, while Platanus branches into 3 main veins, and then each of the two side ones branch again for a total of five.

[AwersomeUser]

also, are all the fossils that i am going to be identifying be a physical fossil? or can they be on photos too? also do i need a magnifying glass? i don't want to buy one (if my school doesn't have any to borrow to me).

They can be either physical or photos. You will probably not need a magnifying glass.

Compacting the photos and saving space isn't as important for this event, since you can have up to a 3 inch binder. I have one page of information and the back is for photos, I usually have 3 per genus. You should put whatever taxonomic classifications there are, even though they probably won't test you on too much of it. Just in case.

And also do I need to know the subclasses or orders? like for genus astraeospongia. I don't think I do, right?

Classification questions are theoretically restricted to what is listed on the Fossil List. I would note the full classification of each specimen somewhere.

Ok thanks but do I need to go into details like this:
https://resizeimage.net/mypic/HxF8V4Ade ... 33430d.jpg?

[AwersomeUser]

also, are all the fossils that i am going to be identifying be a physical fossil? or can they be on photos too? also do i need a magnifying glass? i don't want to buy one (if my school doesn't have any to borrow to me).

They can be either physical or photos. You will probably not need a magnifying glass.

And also do I need to know the subclasses or orders? like for genus astraeospongia. I don't think I do, right?

Classification questions are theoretically restricted to what is listed on the Fossil List. I would note the full classification of each specimen somewhere.

Ok thanks but do I need to go into details like this:
?

Or is just putting what subclasses there are or one sentence description is fine?

[meilingkuo]

I am coaching two kids for the fossils event. They have made a pretty good binder with all information. However, they just could not seem to finish all questions in time before moving on to the next station. It seems that they spend a lot of time flipping the pages to look up the answers for confirmation. Does anybody has suggestion? Does memorization certain information help to speed up? Does any kind of summary table help? We need help to improve performance.

Yes, I would try to memorize stuff. That helps when you are on a time crunch, and memorizing where pages are in your binder also helps you find them. I'd use a table of contents, and tab dividers for easy flipping.

Thanks. That is what I just figured out after a practice run at school. I am thinking about at least try to memorize the genus name as much as possible for rapid ID type of question and some important facts. Any other suggestions?
They have a month before their regional. Hopefully they will be prepared by then.

[meilingkuo]

We have being using online resources as well as field books recommended by SO (Smithsonian and National Audubon Society). I realized that temporal range for certain fossils in Wikipedia and those two books are different and "way off" I always assume that those two books should be more reliable and that is the information that we decided to put in the binder. My students just did a practice run in which they need to sort fossils by temporal range and they got it wrong because we got information from those two books. Based on the answer key, the information from the Wikipedia pages is correct.
Anyone has any idea what source is more reliable? Is there any good database on temporal range of fossils? We need to update our binder soon!

[Unome]

We have being using online resources as well as field books recommended by SO (Smithsonian and National Audubon Society). I realized that temporal range for certain fossils in Wikipedia and those two books are different and "way off" I always assume that those two books should be more reliable and that is the information that we decided to put in the binder. My students just did a practice run in which they need to sort fossils by temporal range and they got it wrong because we got information from those two books. Based on the answer key, the information from the Wikipedia pages is correct.
Anyone has any idea what source is more reliable? Is there any good database on temporal range of fossils? We need to update our binder soon!

Ideally, they would want to trace the information to its origin so they know the controversy and can figure out what the event supervisor is going for with a certain question.

[AwersomeUser]

Also, does this counts as a standard size binder? I just noticed doesn’t say it on it so now I am a bit worried.






I went out just to buy it yesterday and yay I spend 2 hours buying this because I keep getting distracted, especially my mom.

[UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F]

They can be either physical or photos. You will probably not need a magnifying glass.


Classification questions are theoretically restricted to what is listed on the Fossil List. I would note the full classification of each specimen somewhere.

Ok thanks but do I need to go into details like this:
?

Or is just putting what subclasses there are or one sentence description is fine?

Yes, a one sentence description for taxa that are not on the list is probably fine.

[UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F]

Also, does this counts as a standard size binder? I just noticed doesn’t say it on it so now I am a bit worried.






I went out just to buy it yesterday and yay I spend 2 hours buying this because I keep getting distracted, especially my mom.

That looks perfectly fair to me