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Kids on shore with grid

 Teachers

Teachers

Of all the accomplished scientists we've interviewed over the years, there's always one thing they have in common: a teacher who encouraged their curiosity in the natural world.

Lesson Plan Material

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    Lesson Plan
    Life in the Fast Lane – From Hunted to Hunter
    Lab dissection of a squid, a member of Class Cephalopoda (along with the octopus and nautilus). Supported by several Shape of Life segments, students interpret squid adaptations as a radical case of divergent evolution: A line of ancestral snails abandoned the life of sluggish grazing and foraging in favor of a new niche as speedy open water predators.

    Full Lesson Plan

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    Top of the Tree of Life with Species
    Factsheet
    Cambrian Explosion
    The Cambrian Explosion was a burst of animal evolution that occurred in the ocean about 540 million years ago.

    Download Factsheet

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    Earth from space
    Reading
    Cambrian Explosion: A BIG BANG in the Evolution of Animals
    For most of Earth's early history, there simply was no fossil record. Only recently have we come to discover otherwise: Life is virtually as old as the planet itself, and even the most ancient sedimentary rocks have yielded fossilized remains of primitive forms of life.

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