Video
Prehistoric Species of the Niobrara River Lesson
Transcript
Maggie: Hi everyone. My name is Maggie Vetch, and I am a Park Ranger with the Niobrara National Scenic River in Valentine, Nebraska. I am with the National Park Service and joined today by Emily Fisher, who will introduce herself.
Emily: Hi, I'm Emily Fisher and I am with the Nebraska Writing Project. And we are so pleased to bring this special opportunity to you.
Maggie: So we will be learning today about the Niobrara National Scenic River and its prehistoric species through geology and paleontology. So first things first, we want to explore what is the Niobrara National Scenic River and what makes it so special?
Emily: Okay. The first thing that you're going to need throughout this whole lesson is a thinking tracker. And basically what this is, it's a T-chart, so grab a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle. And what you're going to do is you're going to think about what It Says, and then what I Say. It Says is basically anything that is a text. Now remember, texts can be pictures, texts can be what Maggie is going to talk to you about. Text doesn't just have to be writing on a page. So you're going to be able to take information that you're given or you learn, and then when you have I Say, that's where you can think about what you think about that information. So questions you have, ideas you have, basically it's up to you.
Maggie: So the Niobrara National Scenic River is a National Park Service site in North-Central Nebraska. So we protect 76 miles of scenic river starting in Valentine, Nebraska, and then going to the east, we have six different ecosystems that meet at the river's banks, including three different forests and three prairie systems. So the roadmap for this lesson is that we're going to cover geology and paleontology on the Niobrara River.
We'll talk about five different soil layers that have formed over time along the river's banks. And for paleontology, we're going to be talking about some specific eras in time. Why we're doing this is we want to see how geology and paleontology work together to tell the story of climate change and landscape change over time, and give us a bigger picture and a different lens to look at history with.
Emily: Okay. So you're going to grab that thinking tracker and you're going to think about some of the information that you just learned from Maggie. So I wrote down that she said putting the soils and location of the fossils together tells a story of climate and landscape change over time. And that's what I learned from the information. And what I say about this, I had never thought about how geology and paleontology could give me two very different versions of history.
So there was a lot of really cool information that Maggie said there. For example, there are 76 miles of Scenic River, there's six different ecosystems along the Niobrara River. So you could think about some of those things and take a minute to write down something that you learned from Maggie under 'It Says' and then write down what that makes you think, question, wonder, or anything like that on your thinking tracker.
Maggie: So in this next section of our lesson, we're going to explain a little bit more about the story of the running river through time. So the Niobrara River has been flowing for many, many years but there also was a period when it wasn't here yet. So where does our story start? The Mesozoic Era is that first big chunk of time that we are going to talk about today, and that has the Jurassic period and the Cretaceous period within it.
And then we're going to jump into our second chapter, which is the Cenozoic Era. And there's a lot of different periods of time within it. They're all listed there - Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, Holocene, and there is a lot of vocab in this lesson. So we'll break it down a little bit further as we go, but just know that there's a couple of different chapters in this story.
Where we're going to start is probably your first question, which is, where are the dinosaurs in all of this? When we think of Paleontology, which is the study of fossils and the remains that have been found in soil over time, we usually think of the dinosaurs, but our story on the Niobrara doesn't start with dinosaurs.
In the Mesozoic Era, there is the Jurassic and the Cretaceous periods, which we talked about a little bit. The Jurassic period was the age of the dinosaurs. So this is when dinosaurs were roaming across North America. You would know T-Rex, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, kind of those big names. And the cool thing is we didn't have any dinosaurs in North Central Nebraska. And that's because we were under water. There's a sea that runs through North America and it's very shallow, kind of almost tropical - clear blue waters, warm, there are sharks in it, there's early fish. You've got clams and corals and just this abundant life in the sea that you would never think of in the middle of North America.
But on the slide, there's a couple of photos of the mosasaurs and the plesiosaurus, which are the big prehistoric reptiles that were actually living in these seas and oceans in North-Central Nebraska of all places. So we found early shark fossils, we found plesiosaurus which look like the Loch Ness Monster with these big long necks and they ate any fish or smaller animals they could find. They were great predators.
Slowly as you move down to that Jurassic Era, when the dinosaurs elsewhere in North America were slowly dying off, the mosasaur came along, which is this long eel-like creature that you can see on the slide. And the mosasaur was a ferocious predator. It ate clams, it ate plesiosaurus which were very large. But it also ate fish, sharks, turtles, smaller reptiles, and it could crawl up on land a little bit, but the earth was becoming a little more swampy, so these creatures had to be highly adaptable and use what they could to their advantage. But this last picture on the slide is actually the soil layer that formed when that cretaceous sea, that inner continental seabed dried up. So that's called the Pierre Shale Layer, and it's the lowest one that we identify on the Niobrara River in our geologic story through time.
Emily: Okay. So that was so informative, thanks Maggie, and interesting. So what I would like you to do is pick something that you learned or that you took a special interest in and write that down. I was really interested in the abundance of life, and it was more like a tropical shallow sea with clear blue water. So I might write that down and that makes me think about, what kind of fossils are actually under or in the soil in Nebraska that I had never considered? And so I'm just really curious to think about that. So take a moment and write a couple of those things down, share with partners. Go ahead and pause here.
Maggie: So the next stop on our story is to move out of the blue zone, that Cretaceous Era and into the orange era, which is the Cenozoic Era. And the Cenozoic era is known for mammals. There's this column of catastrophic events that we've got written down on our table here. And there's the theory that an asteroid hit the Gulf of Mexico. The Yucatan Peninsula and that massive climate changes were happening. And that's when the sea started to dry up. And there was lots of ash and smog and all of a sudden the waters are receding from the area of Nebraska and life is changing because the environment and the landscape are changing.
So as we journey into the Eocene and the Oligocene and even the Miocene, which is our next chapters, we're going to be looking at the mammals that became abundant along the Niobrara River and in North Central Nebraska. The Eocene is a fun period because Nebraska was almost like a tropical Oasis. You'll see, in this top photo, it looks flat. It looks like Nebraska.
There's some trees and some grasses and some water, but the creatures that were roaming during this time were well adapted to warm-wet climate. There were these rhinos called Titanotheres who had these big horned front -- they weren't even tusks or horns. They were just this growth off of the nose, but it looks like the ancestor of the rhino.
And you can see then this lower left-hand picture is these very, very small almost deer or horse looking creatures. And those are actually some of the earliest horses that we find that originated in Nebraska and they were very small. They were the size of goats. These very small horses had three hooves. So instead of that one big hook that we normally see, they actually had two other toes sticking out the sides. So in this era we see rhinos and horses.
And then we're going to discover a couple more species along the way as well. And then we walk into the next chapter, which is the Oligocene, and this is a period of explosive biodiversity. So life is growing and changing and new species are popping up. This upper left-hand photo is a depiction of what most we'll say the Niobrara looked like at that time. You've got more prairies, the soil is becoming a little drier, a little more arid, there's trees that are growing.
And they're the trees that we identify more today. So like those Oaks, and just those taller leafy trees, instead of more of those sub-tropic trees that we think of. The horses are still roaming the prairie, they are eating grass, and they're eating the leaves off of trees. So they're getting a little taller, longer necks. They still have a couple toes, not just one hoof. But you'll also see in this era that we've got more cousins of those horses.
We've got early zebras and we also have an exciting development that the camels are coming. And these camels are a little different than you would think of. They don't have big humps, they're not those dromedaries. But they've got a little bit of a smoother back. But they're different than the horses. They are definitely their own species at this point. There are also rhinos, and some early elephants, like the prehistoric ancestors of the elephants coming at this time. There's a really fun picture in the middle here of what's called a bear dog.
And there were predators at this time, it wasn't just those browsing, or grass and leaf eating mammals. There were also predators. And so the bear dog is just one that we know of. There were also early cats, early canines, so the ancestors of wolves and dogs. But they're walking on this soil that came from explosions out in Wyoming and Colorado, those mountains are still forming to the west of us. And so all of the dust and ash from those mountain forming explosions is actually drifting into what would be Nebraska and settling where this soil is becoming drier into what's called the Rosebud Layer. It's very hard packed.
And so this upper right hand photo is actually -- you can see the red, and that darker dirt color in the wall. That's the Rosebud Layer. Between the Rosebud Layer and the one that we're going to talk about next, the Valentine Layer is actually where our waterfalls flow out of. Which comes about in the Miocene, is more porous, it's more sandy.
It's almost like a sandstone, it'll hold water really well. And that lets us know also that the climate is changing. So into the Miocene, we've got even more life if you can believe it. There are elephants roaming the early Gomphotherium and Amebelodon you can see him in these photos on the slide. They've got different shapes of tasks, they have four tasks instead of two; just fascinatingly different than the elephants we know today.
And what's interesting is the climate is still drying out more and more, and some of those taller trees are dying off. But the grasslands that we know and are familiar to us on the Great Plains are becoming vast and broad. And so many of the browsers those that ate leaves off of trees are not doing quite as well in this era. And a lot of the grazers that ate shorter plants and grasses are doing really, really well.
So we see herds of camels thriving. And it almost looks like an African savanna of what we would think of today, where you've got elephants and camels with long necks that almost look like giraffes. You've got the early deer, you have horses where those three toes we talked about earlier are going away, you're getting to see more of those one-hoofed horses that look a lot more like we know.
There are still a couple of rhinos, we're getting closer to the end of their life just because climate can't support them as much as it used to. It's getting a little too dry. The resources they need to survive and thrive are slowly just being eaten away by changes in climate, changes in landscape. There's also a really fun picture of this horned rodent, which might be like an early gopher or an early groundhog. These mammals are so familiar to us.
And we can tell from their fossils and in this soil layer, the Valentine Layer, that they were walking and living on. We find a lot of fossils. They're really well preserved and it gives us a great fossil record that tell us about this era in time. And actually it's the lower right hand picture on this slide, that's the Valentine Layer. And then above it, that's where our Ash Hollow Layer comes in. And that's from explosions in Idaho, and even further west that we're blowing into the Great Plains, just settling and becoming the dirt that these mammals walked on.
Emily: Oh wow, thanks, Maggie. That was so interesting. I'm learning so much about the climate of these prehistoric times and what it might have been like for these animals to continue living throughout this time. So go ahead and maybe pick one or two things, there was a whole lot of really awesome information there. I was really struck by how Nebraska's climate went from wet, to dry to becoming drier to support grasslands.
All the way -- when we talked about from this, used to be a shallow sea. And thinking about how Colorado and Wyoming and Idaho have impacted Nebraska as well. So pick something to write down about "It Says" about the climate, or the animals or anything that really stood out to you, and then write down what you have to say about it. And we'll pause here and you can share when your teacher says so.
Maggie: So next chapter in our story, we're going to be looking into the Pliocene and the Pleistocene. And now we're going to talk about the next set of climate changes that were coming through North Central Nebraska. And now we're going to see a dive in biodiversity because the landscape couldn't support what these mammals needed. Things were changing too fast, and the resources they needed were going away.
So in the Pliocene, we're still seeing those broad grasslands, those rhinos are kind of hitting the end. They're out of the resources they need to do well, but we're still going to see elephants, camels, horses, and we're going to see some fun developments like a saber-toothed cats coming around. The elephant species are changing, they're going from those four tusked Gomphotherium and Amebelodon into what we know as the mammoth or the mastodon. Those big roaming creatures that just travelled far and wide for whatever they needed.
So what's really fun is that the camels during this time, actually we're about eight feet tall. These are really long, long, long necks, they almost look like giraffes, which is interesting. And the horses, what's fun is now they look a lot more like the horses that we know today. They've got that the singular hoof. And you can see in the photo, they are just roaming these vast grasslands. But things are getting colder into the Pleistocene.
There are glaciers coming from Minnesota and Iowa, on to what would be the Eastern side of Nebraska. So we didn't necessarily have glaciers sitting on top of the Niobrara River Valley, but we had mammals that were trying to outrun the glaciers. So you'll see the mammoth with the big rolling tusks, and the mastodon with the shorter two tasks, you can see that the tusks on the mammals are really big and you're wondering, "Why is that so different than the than the mastodon with these short little tasks?" And it's because the mammoth used those big tusks to clear out snow and ice and find the resources it needed beneath the snow. And so these mammals had to travel far and wide. They were not in one place.
But we've still got those horses, they are also living on the edge of the glaciers, browsing or grazing and eating grasses. And also then those giant camels are still here. The fossil records in Nebraska, I think there's only three or four, maybe five counties in Nebraska where there haven't been mammoth or mastodon remains. Which is just incredible that they were thriving along, not just the Niobrara, but the entire Great Plains that we know. So the glaciers would have been growing and receding five or six times. Slowly, you'll see those horses that have migrated elsewhere, the camels have just died off and the Pleistocene becomes known as this Ice Age. This strange period of time in North America.
Emily: All right. So a whole bunch of really awesome information there as well. Write down a couple things about what you heard that kind of stood out to you. I'm just thinking about how only a few counties in Nebraska don't have mastodon or mammoth remains. I could write that down, I could say, “That’s amazing.” I had no idea that they were so widespread across the Great Plains. I knew they were here, but I didn't know that they were all over the place. So go ahead and take a minute write down a couple things, write down questions or comments or things you're thinking, we'll have you pause the video and share.
Maggie: So the last stops on our story, we're not going to cover very in depth because we're starting to know them well. The climate after the Ice Age warms up, it becomes very arid grasslands are still doing really well. The Niobrara River is flowing through these canyon, there are pockets of cooler spaces where now we have aspen trees. The sand hills have formed here. We've got dunes that are covered in grasses. But we've got humans, we've got Bison, we're starting to see horses that we know. The seasons are returning, we're starting to see three to four seasons a year. And the predominant predator is the human. The Holocene is the last chapter, which we're actually still living in right now. Now we can look back and see the drastic story of changes in landscape and climate that the Niobrara River has experienced and how our geology and paleontology work together to give us a different view of what was happening years and years ago.
Emily: So now that when you've taken some time to learn about the Niobrara Scenic River in prehistoric times, now we're going to write a little bit about it. And we're going to really kind of capitalize on your imagination and your ideas. So if you need to go back and reference that timeline, as you're thinking through that, that'd be a great resource. But I want you to remember when it comes to writing, we're going to be working really on drafting here. So the point will be to get your ideas out onto the paper. So what we're going to think about is really what surprised you about prehistoric species along the Niobrara Scenic River in Nebraska. There were a lot of things that surprised me. So go ahead and really think about what was one of the most surprising things that you heard.
And what you're going to do, is you're going to choose one species. And if you can't exactly remember the name, that's okay. We're going to show you some pictures in just a minute but maybe I'm thinking the one that really surprised me. So maybe I'm thinking back to the Mosasaurus, back when Nebraska was under this shallow sea and it almost reminds me of Caribbean tropical waters. You’re going to think about that, and you're going to choose one, and you're going to be able to reference your thinking tracker, or your notes, and also that timeline for when we're writing. So here are some of the species that we discussed. Maggie, would you just go ahead and give us a quick reminder of what each one is?
Maggie: Absolutely. So the first photo, in the upper left hand corner is our mosasaur, kind of a long eel looking reptile. And next to them, we've got the early camels, they ate grasses and roamed far and wide in herds. Then we've got in the bottom left hand corner, an ancestor of the rhino. And this isn't titanotheres, this is a cousin. And they would have lived kind of in that warmer, tropical wet, and done pretty well when there were trees and leafy hardy plants to feed. And then our middle photo is actually early horse. And you can see in this photo a little bit like those three toes that we talked about. And then we've got this ancestor of the early elephant. So this is a four-tusked Gomphotherium, and they would have eaten, like it shows, the leaves off of trees.
Emily: Okay. So what we're going to do in the next few minutes is kind of tell the surprising tale of one of these prehistoric species. What I want you to remember is, we're in this kind of drafting stage, so you don't need to worry about your spelling, you don't need to worry about your grammar. You just need to get your ideas out on the page. And I want you to remember your topic is whichever prehistoric species you want to write about. The purpose is really to inform but it’s kind of a creative way to inform because you're really going to imagine that you are these species. So I want you to imagine that you're there and really visualize and you think about those descriptive terms.
What does it feel like? What does the air feel like? Is it humid? What does it smell like? What can you hear? What other animals can you hear? So really personify or bring to life what it would be like to be this creature. And your audience, you're writing for people just like you were us who need to learn a little bit more about Nebraska in prehistoric times. So what you're going to do is your teacher is going to have a timer, so you're just going to write for two minutes and then we'll pause. So the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to describe what you can see, hear or smell, using all those senses along the Niobrara river in prehistoric times.
Now, remember if you're a mosasaur, it's going to be a little bit different because you're going to be swimming in a shallow ocean than if you are an early relative of the elephant. You're going to be seeing different things. Now don't start yet till your teacher tells you. If you're having a hard time saying, “Emily, I don't really know how to start this,” use the sentence I gave you. “As I look upon the landscape, my eyes are drawn to,” so you're writing in first person as if you are this creature. Two minutes, okay. And if you get stuck, just keep going. It's always okay to just keep writing and thinking about what you could see, hear, or smell.
Okay. Go ahead and listen to your teacher for when you're going to start. All right, fantastic. I'm so proud of you for going ahead and really envisioning that. The next thing that we're going to think about in regards to telling a story, it's always important when we're thinking about a character or in terms here at the prehistoric creature about things that we worry about or are concerned. So what you're going to do for the next two minutes is write about your worries or your fears or your concerns about life along the river. So you can think about -- we heard that climate change or the change in climate was like a big continual threat. And as Maggie said, we know that there were predators there, we know that there were grass grazers, and then there were these predators there. So you can think about that kind of stuff.
So if you need something to help you to start it, you're going to start off with, “Although the landscape is,” and you're going to fill in the blank, “I worry that.” Remember that's just a starter, then you keep going from there. Your teacher is going to tell you when to start. Two more minutes, go. All right. So now we've talked about what maybe makes us worry, now we're going to have two minutes to talk about greatest strengths.
So Maggie already told us a lot about how some of these animals had different strengths or what are they really, really, really good at. And so I want you to think about what are your greatest strengths or what do you like most about yourself, or this is sometimes fun to think about, why do other creatures like you, or why do other creatures fear you? And so you can think about your weaknesses or maybe what you want to do to improve. So there's a lot of ideas here, but two minutes to think about this and write about this, listen to your teacher, go ahead and start.
Okay, fantastic. The next two minutes, what are your hopes and what are your dreams? Think about you as the creature, what do you really hope for? Do you hope for a continual food supply, do you hope that the climate continues to be whatever you need it to be? And so you want to maybe think about that. So go ahead and for two minutes, write about what you hope, what you dream, and if you need to sentence then, you can start with, “I hope that.” Okay, go.
All right. Finally, this one only has one minute, but what do you want history to remember about you? And we know that we have these fossils in Nebraska and we're learning about them, but from your perspective as a prehistoric animal, what would you want history to remember about you? And why is that important?
So if you need a sentence to start, you can write, “I want people to remember or history will remember me because.” Go ahead. All right. So now it comes down to sharing your surprising tales about their prehistoric species. The one thing that I might ask you to do is either title your writing with the species that you wrote about, or at the end, you could say, “I am,” and whatever the species it is. And remember, these are drafts. And so these are just works in progress. So if you want to go back and add more details, look back at the timeline. Maggie is going to tell you about some resources where you could go. This could be a really amazing way for you to tell even more about the surprising tale of your prehistoric feature from Nebraska.
Maggie: So if you want to learn more, you can find resources from the Nebraska Writing Project and the National Writing Project on their websites. And to dig deeper into the geology and paleontology of the Niobrara National Scenic River, you can check out our website, which is www.nps.gov\niob, N-I-O-B, and find our paleontology and geology pages. There are also other resources that we will link to in kind of the video notes. Quick credit to our slide deck from SlidesCarnival, and a big thank you in partnership to the Nebraska Writing Project. We are so grateful to work with them at the National Park Service, to put this lesson together for your classroom, and feel free to reach out to Niobrara National Scenic River. If you have any questions about this lesson or the resources used, and we will be very helpful in finding you what you need.
[Audio Ends] [00:30:50]
Description
40 minutes classroom time
Students will be able to compose a fictional first-person narrative from the perspective of a prehistoric species of the Niobrara National Scenic River following the guided prompts to examine and articulate its internal and external life experience of changing climate and landscape in a 9 minute essay.
Duration
30 minutes, 50 seconds
Credit
NPS and Nebraska Writing Project, Funding by the National Writing Project
Date Created
03/01/2021
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