1. Illinois Ecosystem
Was It Always Like This?

2. What comes to mind when you think about the ecosystem of Illinois?
Have students list climate, plants and animals common to this area. Accept all reasonable answers.

3. Illinois Prairie
Common species of your state

4. But things weren’t always this way!
About 400 million years ago, during the Silurian Period, IL was under water!

5. Reefs, corals, crinoids, & shelled invertebrates thrived in a shallow tropical sea
This is a Display found in IL state museum – you can include something similar if you would like

6. Eurypterids – Sea Scorpians
Arthropods that were 2.5 meters long. Eurypterids fossils are known from all continents, and have such amazingly good preservation that their external structure is the best known of all extinct animals. Because of their long tails and the spine-like appendage at the tip, the eurypterids have been called sea-scorpions. And in fact they are closely related to scorpions and other arachnids.
Link for more info

7. Fossil Found In Mazon Creek
we know that they were found in aquatic environment
UCMP: Most have been found in rocks that were laid down in brackish water or freshwater; the earliest groups may have lived in the sea, and some eurypterids may have spent at least short intervals on land.

8. Crinoid Fossil: Sea Lily
Looks like a plant but is an animal. Eat plankton from sea water and have muscles, nerves, gut and repro system. Plant like structures help them remain attached to sea floor.

9. Commonly Found Fossils in IL
They look like plants, however, because the body skeleton or calyx generally is on the end of a stem made of button-like discs and held on the sea floor by either a stony anchor or root-like arms. 
When the animal dies, the plates and discs tend to fall apart and sink to the sea floor. Crinoid stems or stem discs are common throughout most of Illinois, and their popular names include "Indian beads" or "fish bones."

10. Trilobites
Extinct arthropods, pillbugs are similar. Lived in seawater thought to have been scavengers, grazers, and/or filter feeders.
All of these IL fossils point to IL, at some time in the past, was an aquatic environment. Scientists can determine the age of the rock that fossils are found to infer the approximate time the fossilized specimen was alive.

11. 100 Million year old ancestor of large carnivorous cricket-like insect found in Champaign IL
Explain that to find out more about the ecosystem at this time we can research what is known about this animal this animal.

12. Fossils Document Changes to Ecosystems
Working as lab table groups, you will research areas around the United States to compare the modern and ancient ecosystem.
You will use fossils as evidence to document the claims made.
You will present your findings to the class using a visual aid to support your presentation.