Taphonomy Board Game- College Edition

Lab alumna Anna Weiss and I developed an educational board game about fossilization: "Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized".  The game is modeled after the Ya Ha Tinda Lagerstätte, an Early Jurassic-aged fossil deposit in Canada. Through competitive play, game players learn about taphonomy (i.e., processes that affect an organism as it fossilizes).

Over the past year and a half, we have been testing the game as an educational activity for colleges and universities. Our paper about the study is now available online (open access) in the Journal of Geoscience Education (Curriculum and Instruction)! The paper describes the learning objectives of the game as well as modifications for your specific classroom needs.

“Taphonomy: Dead and fossilized”: A new board game designed to teach college undergraduate students about the process of fossilization

Rowan C. Martindale & Anna M. Weiss 

https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2019.1693217

Everything you need to play the game and use it as a lab activity can be found here: https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/NQV2CU.

We also have a SERC "Teach the Earth" page about the game: https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activities/231524.html. There is also a "High school version" in the works!

If you want to learn more about the site this game is based on, I gave a public talk about the site at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. More detail about this and other games can be found here: http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/martindale/paleontological-board-games/