Science Fenns · Changes Over Time
Creek Through Time
One creek bend. Three times. Turn the big brass dial and watch the world change.
Right now
A creek bend, right now
Start here. This is the creek bend today. Everything you will see in the older times happened right on this spot.
- Look at the red rock. It was not always rock. It started as mud and sand, and it was pressed hard for a very long time.
- The layers in that rock are different times. Low layers are older. High layers are newer.
- Every time you turn the dial, you are going down through those layers in your mind.
Things to find
Great blue heronWhite-tailed deerDragonflyPrickly pearRed sandstone
About 15,000 years ago
The same creek bend, long ago
Fifteen thousand years is not very long for the earth. People were already living on this continent. And so were animals that are gone now.
- Columbian mammoths stood over fourteen feet tall at the shoulder. A big male weighed up to ten tons.
- They did not have thick shaggy coats. Mammoths from the warmer south had very little hair.
- Mammoths, camels, giant ground sloths and saber-toothed cats all lived on this continent at the same time.
Things to find
Columbian mammothMammoth calfWestern camelGiant ground slothSaber-toothed cat
About 113 million years ago
The same creek bend, a very long time ago
This is a hundred million years before the mammoths. There were no people. There was no grass. A warm shallow sea was close by, and the ground was soft mud.
- Dinosaurs walked in soft mud. The mud dried and hardened, and the footprints stayed. They turned into rock.
- At Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas, a river now shows tracks from this age. Long-necked sauropods made some of them. A meat-eater about fifteen feet tall made others.
- People have found dinosaur footprints on many continents. A footprint is a fossil of one moment.
Things to find
PterosaurSauropodYoung sauropodFootprintsFar herd
Your time passport
Earn a stamp in every time.
Find all five things in a time and it stamps your passport. This page keeps nothing. When you close it, the stamps go away, so print your page before you leave.
Time Traveler
This page belongs to
who visited one creek bend today, in the Ice Age and in the age of dinosaurs, and found everything there.
Science Fenns