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Shape of Life offers classroom media and resources depicting the evolution of the animal kingdom on planet earth. Explore animal adaptation, animations, and behaviors along with the amazing scientists who bring their stories to life. Discover a rich selection of NGSS materials including lesson plans, readings, illustrations and activities that inspire a deeper dive into animal phyla. Shape of Life content is FREE to students and educators all over the world.
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Hey! It's Paleontology Month at Shape of Life
New Virtual Classroom Resources
Marine Arthropods: A Successful Design - for ONLINE LEARNING
Discover the advantages of having jointed legs and an exoskeleton.
Terrestrial Arthropods: The Conquerors - for ONLINE LEARNING
In this lesson, students explore how the adaptable arthropod body allowed them to invade land and air.
Featured Teacher
Erin Rempala, San Diego City College
Posted on May 7th, 2021
I would say spending lots and lots of time in nature as a child influenced me most in pursuing science,” said Erin Rempala who teaches Environmental Science & Sustainability, Marine Biology and Oceanography at San Diego City College.
If it includes outside adventure, Erin is all IN!
Featured Scientist
Matthew Clapham
Posted on May 21st, 2021
Professor and Department Chair, Earth & Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz
Like so many kids Matthew loved dinosaurs when he was growing up in Vancouver, B.C. It wasn’t a direct route from “dinos” to his current career, though. He was lucky enough to take a geology class in the 12th grade and discovered he was fascinated by fossils and rocks and geology. And, like many future paleontologists, Matthew enjoyed the outdoors, boy scouts and hiking. In college he liked chemistry and geology but wasn’t thinking paleontology until he took a class in it and thought: “I can do this!”
Colin Howe PhD Candidate, Penn State University
Posted on March 9th, 2021
Although Colin Howe is now living far from the ocean in school in Pennsylvania, his mind has always been on the ocean. He’s working on his PhD in marine science at Penn State studying corals off the coast of Colombia.
Featured Creature
Ammonites may be the most familiar fossil to us — aside from dinosaurs.Blog
Paleontology Blog
Posted on May 7th, 2021
What is paleontology? The word translates from the Greek as “old, being, science.” Paleontologists primarily use fossils for their study of “old beings.” Plants and animals are fossilized when they are covered by sediment and eventually minerals soak into the remains. Fossils are generally the hard parts like bones or shells. Or they can be evidence of the existence of ancient creatures like tracks and other traces.
BIODIVERSITY: Because Our Lives Depend On It!
Posted on April 20th, 2021
We’re celebrating Earth Month by highlighting the importance of biodiversity for all ecosystems on earth and the animal kingdom. “Biodiversity (from “biological diversity”) refers to the variety of life on Earth at all its levels, from genes to ecosystems, and can encompass the evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes that sustain life.” Biodiversity is the most complex feature of our planet. And, biodiversity is the most vital part of earth although it’s mostly undiscovered.
News
Did You Know? Kids Find Fossils
Posted on May 24th, 2021
In 2017 a nine-year old in New Mexico tripped and fell. What Jude Spark tripped on, he found out later, was the skull of a rare stegomastodon (an elephant-like creature) from 1.2 million years ago. In 2017 a five-year old enjoying a beach picnic in Homer, Alaska saw something odd. It turned out to be a very rare 10-million-year-old jawbone from a tapir, a pig-like mammal.
People Have Shaped Nature for Thousands of Years
Posted on May 4th, 2021
The idea of “natural” or “wild” lands is a myth. Scientists released a study showing that about three quarters of terrestrial nature has been shaped over 12,000 years by the land use of Indigenous and traditional peoples. Those land use practices included burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication and cultivation.
The cause of the current biodiversity crisis is a result of intensifying and new uses of the biodiverse landscapes shaped and sustained by traditional societies. “[This study] shows that high biodiversity is compatible with, and in some cases a result of, people living in these landscapes,” says Yadvinder Malhi at the University of Oxford. “Working with local and traditional communities, and learning from them, is essential if we are to try to protect biodiversity.”