EPICC virtual fieldwork experiences (VFEs) provide opportunities to virtually visit classic paleontological field sites along the Pacific coast and to explore images and data from specimens that have been collected there. VFEs can combine high resolution and 3-D pictures for exploring an outcrop, images of fossils (snails, clams, sand dollars, and others) in place and in museum collections, geological maps and satellite views, and much more. Visit the EPICC VFEs at the project website: https://epiccvfe.berkeley.edu/.

“EPICC” refers to the Eastern Pacific Invertebrate Communities of the Cenozoic project, a partnership of nine natural history museums, working together to put data online about marine fossils found along the Pacific coasts of the Americas. The VFEs have been created through a partnership between educators at the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the Paleontological Research Institution, two of the partner organizations in the EPICC network.

The EPICC VFEs were designed with secondary school students and their teachers in mind; teachers can visit the page “For educators” for further details about using the VFEs as classroom activities (e.g., teacher guides, information on using VFEs, and science education standards). We expect that other audiences will find the imagery and information interesting, including members of the public with a passion for invertebrate fossils, researchers who haven’t been to the field sites, and college educators with introductory classes. The VFEs are each composed of several modules that focus on topics such as fossils, sediments, and tectonics; teachers will find that these can be adapted to middle or high school levels, or adapted to specific curricular topics within Earth sciences, environmental sciences, and biology.

To learn more about the technical details of the EPICC Thematic Collections Network go to the EPICC project homepage.

We are funded through the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and affiliated with Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio).

To learn more about the project team, visit the Credits page.