Upon completing this activity students should be able to:
Describe sources of variation in fossil shark teeth
Identify extinct species of sharks by their teeth
Infer the geologic age of a sample based on fossil shark teeth
Materials
A sample from Florida containing several hundred Miocene shark teeth.
Geologic timescale
Reference materials for identifying Miocene shark teeth
Procedure
Divide students into groups of two or three and give each group a handful of Miocene shark teeth (Figure 6) and a geologic timescale. Tell the students the age of the shark teeth and have them locate the Miocene on the geologic timescale. The University of California Museum of Paleontology has a good description of the Miocene Epoch
(http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/tertiary/mio.html).
Have your students separate the shark teeth into (what they believe are) different species. Go around to each
group and assist with their sorting. Then have the students use the reference materials to name their fossil species.
Fig 6
Resources
Figure 7 shows the most common fossils. For additional images and descriptions of common Miocene shark teeth, visit:
