Students pursue passion for discovery

“Should I start baggin’?” asks Ryan Johnson, a high school senior from Waunakee. He grabs a Ziploc Freezer bag and a garden trowel and kneels onto the tan, dusty dirt. He starts digging.

Johnson, along with high school freshman Nina Zitzer, were invited by the Geology Museum to participate in a new outreach effort. The goal: To help students experience the thrill of discovery as they explore how animal communities in Wisconsin have changed over the last 25,000 years.

On an unusually warm and foggy December morning, the two students traveled with two Waunakee school teachers to a rugged spot along the Wisconsin River (to protect this natural resource, the location is undisclosed). The group — wearing old jeans, sweatshirts and hiking boots — arrived on the scene, where they met UW–Madison geologists Richard Slaughter and Joe Skulan.

“By the end of the day, you’ll be able to tell the difference between the vertebrae of snakes and fish,” says Slaughter, who spearheaded the outreach effort. “You’ll be able to tell the difference between the teeth of voles and shrews.” After explaining that few geologists have explored the area’s caves, he exclaims, “There are big discoveries to be made here, and why not by you!”

For several years, Slaughter has been planning an outreach program that would bring students into the field to collect samples of ancient bones. “We’ve always intended to do this work with them,” he says. “Now we’re committed to it.”

The Waunakee students’ field trip represents the second in a series. The geologists kicked it off last month by inviting Dodgeville high school junior Jake Reeson on a similar expedition. Slaughter says he was impressed with Reeson’s enthusiasm for the field and his extensive list of questions about becoming a paleontologist.

Right now, Slaughter is brainstorming the possibility of week-long summer workshops where students pair with teachers to do field research. He says the workshops might investigate the fossil evidence in a particular area; by combining all the findings, students could draw new conclusions. Ideally, Slaughter wants to invite students from low-income families or those with disabilities.

Excited by the thrill of discovery, the group heads down one of the leafy trails, until Slaughter spots a crack in the rocky hill above. He and the students climb up the slope. With their backs pressed against the hard opening, Slaughter grabs a handful of dirt and sifts through it, uncovering a vole skull as small as a nickel and a bat bone as thin as a leaf’s vein. Zitzer, with her pink-painted nail, picks through another handful, revealing even more bones. Slaughter shouts down to Joe, “I think this might be a candidate to dig deeper!”

Back on the trail, the students look above for other treasure troves of bones in the bluffs. While Johnson and the geologists scurry up one incline, Zitzer and the teachers search for another opening. Zitzer points above and tells the rest, “Let’s go up there!” After several slips up the muddy slope, she and the teachers peer into a rock shelter about 20 feet deep. Zitzer crawls into a crevice, finds part of a skull. When Slaughter arrives, he explains that the skull was probably from a young raccoon: “The teeth are pointy and bones in the skull aren’t fully fused.”

As the group digs deeper, they find more bones — some three inches long; others no bigger than a pea. If looking for bones, caves are the best place to start. Skulan says their sheltered environment, lack of sunlight and constant temperature (about 53degrees Fahrenheit in Wisconsin’s caves) preserve bones well. Often, carnivores come to the caves carrying dead prey. The tiny bones found by Johnson and Zitzer most likely belonged to victims of predators, says Slaughter, because some bones have teeth marks.

These bones, along with shovels of dirt, are dumped into a plastic bag. With a black Sharpie pen, Skulan writes the location: “Nina’s Cave.”

As Slaughter heads down the slope with one of the bags, he confesses, “I feel like a smuggler carrying these bags of dirt.” The dirt could hold valuable information — clues to Wisconsin’s geological past. The next day, when the students toss the dirt onto a screen and hose it down, they’ll discover that the samples contain thousands of bones, including a vole tooth that Slaughter says “almost certainly dates back to the Ice Age.”

Wisconsin is the perfect place to teach kids about geology, says Slaughter. During its history, the state has experienced episodes of intense volcanic activity; it has been covered with tropical seas and massive glaciers. Skulan explains that “in some ways this makes it more interesting than a place like Colorado where the geology is dominated by just one event.”
Evidence from these periods are perfect tools for teaching 4th-graders taking a class on Wisconsin, says Kristin Buskager, one of the Waunakee teachers who accompanied the students on the geology field trip. Buskager says she’ll use the pictures she took and the bones she collected to tell the students about the state’s natural history.

“It’s exciting to find new ways to teach them,” she shares. For her, the day has taught her that she can be more than a hiker who sticks to the trails. “Observing Joe and Rich has helped me raise my comfort level.”

The other teacher, Robin Carelli, agrees. “Being with people like Joe and Rich who have a passion for this stuff is the best way to learn,” she says. “This experience makes me compelled to bring students out here. The excitement that comes with exploration would light a fire in almost any kid. Just look at Nina in that hole!”