Here you will find resources to help educators and their students understand that many different plants and animals evolved and became extinct during the Phanerozoic; recognize that plant and animal fossil assemblages of the very deep geologic past are unlike organisms alive today; describe the variety of plants and animals that once lived in your community; relate the increases and decreases in the numbers of different organisms during the Phanerozoic to geologic causes; describe several lines of fossil evidence to support the theory of evolution based on the fossil record.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students understand how changes in the Earth's climate have affected organisms throughout geologic time; understand that organisms that dominate the continents today differ from the organisms that dominated the Earth in the deep geologic past; understand that severe ecological disruptions alter the history of life, resulting in extinction followed by the evolution and appearance of new organisms; understand that newly evolved organisms develop similar body features that allow them to use the same resources as those organisms that became extinct.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students investigate how changes in climate are linked to shifts in the distribution of oak and spruce trees in North America, 20 ka to the present; understand how scientists can use data collected from pollen and spores to reconstruct past environments; understand how the climate of your community has changed over the past 18,000 years; understand how this climate change has affected the plants and animals of your community.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students define the major biomes of North America and identify your community's biome; understand that organisms on land and in the ocean have physical and chemical limits to where they live; recognize the most common plants and animals in your community; explore how a change in physical and chemical conditions within your community could alter your community's biomes; understand that there are predictable relationships between where the different biomes occur in North America.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students understand the process of fossilization; determine which plant and animal parts have the highest and lowest potential for becoming fossilized and understand why this is the case; determine which organisms in your community are most likely to become preserved in the fossil record; determine where fossils may be forming within your community; understand the hierarchy of a food chain and how this affects the likelihood that an organism will be preserved in the fossil record.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students brainstorm the ways that global warming might influence the Earth; list ways that global warming might affect your community; design an experiment on paper to test your ideas; explain some of the effects of global warming that computer models of global climate have predicted; understand positive and negative feedback loops and their relationship to climate change; evaluate and understand the limitations of models in studying climate change through time.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students compare data to understand the relationship of carbon dioxide to global temperature; evaluate given data to draw a conclusion; recognize a pattern of information graphed in order to predict future temperature; understand some of the causes of global warming.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students model present and ancient land masses and oceans to determine current flow; explain how ocean currents affect regional and global climate; understand how ocean currents are affected by Earth's moving plates; understand the relationship between climate and Earth processes like moving plates, mountain building and weathering.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students understand that Earth has an axial tilt of about 23 1/2 degrees; use a glove to model the season on Earth; investigate and understand the cause of the season in relation to the axial tilt of the Earth; Understand that the shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun is an ellipse and that this shape influences climate; understand that insolation to the Earth varies as the inverse square of the distance to the Sun.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students understand the significance of growth rings in trees as indicators of environmental change; understand the significance of ice cores from glaciers as indicators of environmental change; investigate and understand the significance of geologic sediments as indicators of environmental change; examine the significance of glacial sediments and landforms as evidence for climate change; investigate and understand the significance of fossil pollen as evidence of climate change.