Vocabulary Tracker!

Our goals for new words
Science classes can include so many new vocabulary words that the class is boring and exhausting (from the view of some students and professors!).


 * This class will use:
 * New words that express big ideas or concepts that are not common in everyday conversations.
 * New words that help us refer to very specific things - groups of critters, places in history, times in Earth's past.
 * New words as a framework for deep understanding of the material.
 * This class will not:
 * Require new words just to sound fancy or make the class hard to pass.
 * Emphasize memorizing lists of words or facts.
 * Emphasize spelling (whenever we can avoid it!).

Whenever possible, we will tackle big ideas and concepts by using words already used in college-level English.

This is important to us, because we believe that college should make the most important, most challenging, and most fun parts of science accessible to everyone!

When you learn a new word, term, concept, or idea, ask yourself:


 * What does it mean?
 * Why is it important?
 * How does it fit into the big picture?

Vocabulary Tracker
This is a list of words we ESTIMATE we'll use in class, with handy links to their wiki pages!


 * Don't use this as a comprehensive list of the only things you need to know for class.
 * But it's a good barometer – if you're doing well on these, you're probably doing well in general.
 * Most terms have different meanings and contexts in different fields of study. While you can use any resources to learn about these terms, we hope you'll pay attention to what they mean in the context of paleontology, dinosaurs, this class, etc.
 * If you're checking this list before we've emphasized these terms in the course, don't worry - we just haven't built the simple wiki page for all of them yet.

Module 1:

 * observations & interpretations
 * clade, cladogram, phylogeny
 * basal, derived
 * clades of interest: tetrapod; amniote; synapsid; diapsid; archosaur; dinosaur
 * biomechanics
 * adaptation, exaptation