Diggin' the Past

Jim Flocks: This is a core barrel that hasn't been opened up yet, and it's empty. What we do is we push this into the ground, and as it goes in, it fills up with sand or clay or whatever you see on the table. We're going to shake it into the ground using a device called a vibracorer. You ready? You want to come over here and grab some? Here we go.

Teacher: When you do this, what do you find out?

Jim Flocks: We do many, many different tests on the sediments. We look at different sizes of the sand, and that tells us what type of environment it was deposited in, whether it was a wavy environment or a shallow quiet environment. We look at the large and tiny microscopic shells. The shells tell us how old the sediments are or where they came from-land or sea, deep or shallow water.