Students will use a food web model to gather data and classify which roles (producer, consumer, and decomposer) each organism plays in this mountain ecosystem. In doing so, students will reason how energy and matter are impacted by the change taking place in this environment. Students will develop and use models to explain their thinking.
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.

Paleontologists, including a leading expert in horned dinosaurs, lead students through this phenomenon-based investiigation to understand the evolutionary pathway that lead to Triceratops. Students will study use the fossil record and use a suite of interactives to evaluate shared traits, phylogenetic trees, and deep time maps to build an evidence base to help them answer their research question. Along the way, they'll earn a virtual field tool kit and a NHMU Junior Paleontologist certificate.
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.

Students will compare their Mystery Fossils to 3D models of fossils already classified by type and species from Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. The data they collect will serve as the basis for their answer to the central question of this investigation,“What dinosaur did these bones come from?”
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.

Students will examine an interactive quarry map of Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, use scientific field notes (primary source material), and consider modern analogs to figure out what happened at this mass death site millions of years ago.
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.

Students will define the problem by identifying dead pine trees in aerial images of the Uinta Mountains. They'll determine whether the amount of dead trees currently found is significantly different than the historic average and identify the resources a tree needs to survive along with clues that can tell them which resources the trees may not be getting. Students will analyze tree samples and images to gather evidence that can help explain what's happening to these trees. Finally, they will use historical temperature and precipitation data to develop an explanation for why this montane environment is changing.
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.

Students will build an energy pyramid model to visualize populations of producers, consumers, and decomposers in this mountain ecosystem and how biotic and abiotic changes may impact those populations.
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.

In pairs, students will use the Dino Lab simulator to build a unique dinosaur model to survive four different challenges. Students will be prompted along the way to think critically about the relationship between the physical structure and functions of their models and investigate which combinations of features are optimal for success in the game.
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.

Students will query collections for organisms from montane forests in the Uinta Mountains. They’ll classify organisms (predator, competitor, mutualist) based on their relationship to the lodgepole pine using field notes and previous knowledge, then create a model to communicate and reason about the impacts of change on these interactions.
NHMU Research Quests are phenomena-based, online investigations asynchronously led by museum educators and scientists that are rooted in museum research and collections. Resources include teacher instructional guides, formative and summative assessments, and student notebooks. A free educator acount is required to access the materials.