The Evidence, Examined Honestly

Lesson Goal

Students will describe fossils and the two kinds of dating, name the five kinds of evidence the textbook lists, and sort each into what was found or measured and what it is taken to mean about origins.

Side by Side, Not Blended

Same rule as the first lesson of the unit. What can be found and measured is taught exactly as the textbook teaches it. What the finds mean about where living things came from is named as a different kind of question, and both accounts are given in their own words: common descent, and creation.

The student sorts and checks facts and is never asked to pick a side. The reading, the questions and the notebook work all stay on the sorting.

Key Concepts

A fossil is a measured thing: it sits in a layer, and the layer can be dated. Relative dating orders the layers and radioactive dating puts numbers on them.

A likeness between living things is also a measured thing. Whether the likeness shows a shared ancestor or a shared designer is the interpretation, and it comes from outside the measurement.

Added From the Record

The note that the appendix does a job, the three assumptions behind radioactive dating, and one sentence on how people who hold creation read the layers are added from the record. The book's own parts are the mosasaur story, the five fossil types, both kinds of dating, the geologic time scale, the five kinds of evidence and the rock-layer review item.

Key Vocabulary

Fossil

Any trace or remains of life from an earlier time, such as a bone, an imprint, or an insect in resin.

Sedimentary rock

Rock that forms when mud, sand or tiny pieces settle out of water and pack into layers. Most fossils are found in it.

Relative dating

Putting fossils in order by their layers: in undisturbed rock, lower layers are older than higher ones.

Radioactive elements

Elements whose atoms slowly change to a stable product at a steady rate, which lets scientists compare the amounts to estimate an age.

Homologous structures

Body parts built on the same plan, like the bones in a human arm and a bat's wing.

Vestigial structure

A body part that is small and seems to have little or no use.

Embryology

The study of how living things develop before birth.