Teaching a Graduate Course to In-Service Teachers on Ice Age Mammals, Global Change, and Mass Extinction

Abstract

An in-service teacher training course offered cooperatively by the New Jersey State Museum and Kean College of New Jersey focused on the Pleistocene megafauna extinction and placed this event in the context of other mass extinctions, global change, the ice ages, and the current biodiversity crisis. The course made extensive use of museum exhibits and specimens, especially the life-sized Dinamation models of Pleistocene mammals incorporated in our temporary display entitled “Great Mammals of the Ice Age.” A primary objective of the course was to suggest to teachers how they can use museum resources as an educational tool. To this end, the midterm exam became a scavenger hunt based on the museum's exhibits. We studied the two leading theories of Pleistocene megafauna extinction: coevolutionary disequilibrium and Pleistocene blitzkrieg. From a geologic perspective, we are still in this megafauna mass extinction event, as large and endangered mammalian populations dwindle and disappear. The class ended with a...