Welcome to the Prehistoric Journey Online Guide. This guide is your companion to making the most out of your visit to Prehistoric Journey with your students.

Educators Sourcebook

The Prehistoric Journey Educators Sourcebook was developed to help educators prepare for a class visit to Prehistoric Journey and to provide resource information about the history of life on Earth. The Educators Sourcebook includes background on each of the main sections of the exhibition, suggestions for how to explore the exhibition, self-guided tours, and student investigations that can be used to enhance your visit.

Note: The Educators Sourcebook was originally published in 1995 when Prehistoric Journey opened and does not reflect updates to the exhibition.

Table of Contents (PDF | 1.6MB)
Early Life (PDF | 974KB)
Paleozoic Era (PDF | 4MB)
Mesozoic Era (PDF | 4.5MB)
Cenozoic Era (PDF | 4.8MB)
Self Guided Tours (PDF | 633KB)
Investigations (PDF | 1.7MB)
Glossary (PDF | 637KB)

Exhibition Map

This map provides an overview of the different areas of the exhibition. Exhibition Map (PDF | 374KB)

Colorado Model Content Standards K-12

• Standard 1: Students apply the processes of scientific investigation and design, conduct, communicate about, and evaluate such investigations.
• Standard 3: Life Science: Students know and understand the characteristics and structure of living things, the processes of life, and how living things interact with each other and their environment.
• Standard 4: Earth and Space Science: Students know and understand the processes and interactions of Earth's systems and the structure and dynamics of Earth and other objects in space.
• Standard 5: Students understand that the nature of science involves a particular way of building knowledge and making meaning of the natural world

Colorado Standard 2: Life Science

• High School 2: The size and persistence of populations depend on their interactions with each other and on the abiotic factors in an ecosystem.
• High School 9: Evolution occurs as the heritable characteristics of populations change across generations and can lead populations to become better adapted to their environment.
• Seventh Grade 1: Individual organisms with certain traits are more likely than others to survive and have offspring in a specific environment.
• Seventh Grade 5: Multiple lines of evidence show the evolution of organisms over geologic time.
• Fifth Grade 1: All organisms have structures and systems with separate functions.
• Fourth Grade 1: All living things share similar characteristics, but they also have differences that can be described and classified.
• Fourth Grade 2: Comparing fossils to each other or to living organisms reveals features of prehistoric environments and provides information about organisms today.
• Second Grade 2: Each plant or animal has different structures or behaviors that serve different functions.

Colorado Standard 3: Earth Science

• High School 1: The history of the universe, solar system, and Earth can be inferred from evidence left from past events.
• Seventh Grade 2: Geologic time, history, and changing life forms are indicated by fossils and successive sedimentation, folding, faulting, and uplifting of layers of sedimentary rock.