Aging Diamonds?

In this video from Nature, geological detectives use ancient diamonds to learn more about Earth's inner layers.

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Build an Island

This interactive resource from NOVA Online shows how an atoll is formed from a volcanic island and describes the role coral reefs play in this process.

Caves: Extreme Conditions for Life

This video segment adapted from NOVA raises the provocative idea that if life can exist in the most extreme environments on Earth — such as in dark, toxic caves — then perhaps living things can also survive in harsh environments on other planets.

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Climate Change Impacts Alaska Glaciers

This video adapted from KTOO takes a look at Earth's warming and cooling cycles and the current atypical trend of warming that is impacting the glaciers in Alaska's Inside Passage.

Continental Drift: What's the Big Idea?

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how the theory that explains the position of Earth's continents was established and later modified, and gain important insights into how science and the scientific community operate.

Dating Lava Flows on Mauna Loa Volcano, Hawaiʻi

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientists search for carbonized remains of plants preserved in lava flows to find out how long it has taken rain forests on Hawaiʻi to regenerate after a volcanic eruption.

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Deep-Sea Vents and Life's Origins

Deep-sea vents are home to life forms that do not rely on the Sun's energy. They depend instead on energy from volcanoes on the ocean floor. This video segment adapted from NOVA hypothesizes that life on Earth may have begun in this extreme environment.

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Deep Time

This interactive timeline from Evolution offers a visual representation of the major geological changes, transformations, and extinction episodes in the 4.6-billion-year history of Earth.

Deep Time

Students learn about deep time by visiting an interactive Web timeline, comparing geologic time periods to the calendar year, and setting up a live-action timeline in the classroom.

Diatoms Measure Climate Change

In this video segment adapted from NOVA: "Becoming Human," learn what the analysis of fossilized microscopic algae in sediment tells us about rapid changes in climate in Africa's past.

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Drilling to Antarctica’s Rock Core

In this video adapted from ANDRILL, find out how geoscientists get through more than a dozen football fields of ice and water in order to study the rock and sediment beneath Antarctica.

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Earthquake Prediction

This video segment adapted from NOVA tells the tragic story of two Japanese seismologists who disagreed about the threat of earthquakes in the early twentieth century. Today, seismologists in California offer residents a probability of risk that an earthquake might occur.

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Earthquakes: Los Angeles

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, animations are used to show how the hills around Los Angeles were formed by earthquakes at small thrust faults that extend outward from the larger San Andreas fault.

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Earthquakes: The Prehistoric Record

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a geologist digs a trench along the San Andreas Fault to reveal three thousand years of earthquake history. Information from the layers of sediment may help geologists to predict earthquakes.

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The Falls of the Ohio

This video from KET examines one of the largest exposed fossil beds in the world, found at the Falls of the Ohio River, near Louisville, Kentucky.

Fossilized Dinosaur Bones

This still collage produced for Teachers' Domain features a variety of images of fossilized dinosaur bones, which provide evidence for the existence of these fascinating reptiles.

Fossils

Fossils are indicators of past life. This collection of still images produced for Teachers' Domain features examples of fossils from plants, animals, and insects.

Fossils: An Ancient Sea in Indiana

In this interactive activity from the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana, examine a piece of the ancient Borden Sea in what is now central Indiana. Explore the types of fossils found there and the clues they offer to ancient life on Earth.

Fun with Fossils

Students create their own fossils, and then learn how real fossils form, and investigate what they can tell us about the past.

Geology of Death Valley

This video segment from NatureScene examines the landforms of Death Valley and how they came to be.

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