Georgia STEM teachers have the opportunity to apply for a 7-week 2021 GIFT internship that will involve two weeks of paleontological excavations at Natural Trap Cave, Wyoming.
Natural Trap Cave (NTC) is one of the most exceptional late Pleistocene fossil sites in the world. NTC is a 25-meter-deep karst sinkhole on the western side of the Big Horn Mountains in north-central Wyoming, accessible only by rappelling. The cave contains the remains of thousands of large, extinct Ice Age mammals, as well as hundreds of thousands of small vertebrate fossils. The GIFT teacher will intern in the lab of Dr. Jenny McGuire (www.mcguire.gatech.edu), learning how we can use fossils and modern community analyses to explore how animals have responded to environmental changes in the past and how we anticipate them to respond in the future. The GIFT teacher will learn to identify fossil specimens and perform community analyses while in the lab for the first several weeks. He or she will then have the opportunity to travel to Natural Trap Cave where they will participate in fossil excavation and community analyses of modern mammals living adjacent to the cave. All necessary training and equipment will be provided.
In addition to the GIFT professional development stipend and PLUs, the teacher selected for this placement will also have to travel to Natural Trap Cave, Wyoming for this internship. All meals on site will also be provided.
