By Cathy Kimmel-Srock
Review Staff Writer
When LOHS biology teacher Andrea Brook returns to school in the fall and her students ask her what she did this summer, she has a mammoth story to tell them. Well, a Gomphotherium story, to be more accurate.
Brook was recently part of a research project where she, along with Troy High School teacher Rebecca Brewer, unearthed a leg bone from a Gomphotherium (gomphotheres for short), which is a prehistoric elephant whose name translates into “welded beast.”
The story starts when Brook, who has been teaching at the high school since 1999, attended the National Association of Biology Teachers Conference in November, a conference where she was awarded as the 2015 Outstanding Biology Teacher for Michigan. Here, she attended a session by the University of Florida about using fossils to teach evolution.
“I signed up to field test some curriculum they wrote,” Brook explained. “As part of the field testing, they supplied all the necessary equipment to do the lessons and labs, including 3D-printed models of fossil horse teeth.”
At the end of the field testing, one of the program administrators told Brook about a summer program called GABI RET (Great American Biotic Exchange – Research Experience for Teachers), which is funded by the National Science Foundation and gets classroom teachers involved with university research. In this case, that university was the University of Florida and the project was a two-day paleontology dig that took place last month.
A paleontology dig site is sectioned off in grids, and upon arrival at the site, Brook, as well as the other participants, were assigned a square to work in. The dig started off slow with little significant discovery.
“For most of the first day, I uncovered only small bones like rodent vertebrae and teeth,” Brook said, adding that she also found fish scales as the area used to be a riverbed.
“Toward the end of the first day, my partner and I hit something big in our square. It looked like a big rock. Once the end was uncovered, the professor on the site was able to confirm that it was a large bone.”
Brook and Brewer had to maintain their excitement though, as they weren’t allowed to keep digging deeper to unearth the full scope of what they found. According to Brook, you don’t dig down most of the time but across.

“They are really meticulous about keeping the area in each square level,” she explained. “This is important because the depth at which fossils are found indicates what organisms were living at the same time in the same place.”
This meant that after finding the “big bone,” Brook had to continue digging across.
“I was only allowed to continue to level the area in my square to the level of all the other squares around me,” she added. “They said it will probably take months to get the entire bone out.”
Brook explained that when that time comes, they do a technique called “jacketing,” where they make a plaster cast of an entirely exposed bone to safely remove it.
As Brook and Brewer worked in their area and uncovered the leg bone, other members of the dig team found other bones from the Gomphotherium a few meters away.
While Brook did not get to see the entire bone, the experience was one that resonated with her. According to Brook, gomphotheres roamed the earth until the last ice age when they went extinct, which means these animals and humans never lived at the same time.
“This is what made the find so special to me. I was able to make contact with an animal that no other human ever touched or laid eyes on,” Brook explained. “There is a kind of deep respect and even bond that forms when you touch something that was once alive.”
“When I touched that bone, I kind of felt like it somehow validated the life of that animal,” she added. “Sort of like: ‘You died in this spot. Maybe you were alone or maybe someone was with you, but I’m here with you now. You lived and your life was just as important as mine.’”
For Brook, it was hard to put into words just how special that moment was as she realized the profoundness of it all.
“It reminded me of how all living things play their role in nature and how life comes and goes,” she said. “Our species is young. Gomphotheres lived for millions of years before they went extinct; humans have only been here for thousands.”
And while the experience has clearly left a lasting mark on Brook, she, too, left a mark on it as whatever fossils you discover in your dig square are tagged with an ID number and the name of the “collector.”
“That leg bone now has my name attached to it, which it also pretty cool,” she added.
Brook knows this experience will carry over into her classroom.
“The challenge of teaching science is to provide students opportunities to perform the authentic practices that scientists use in the field,” she explained. “In order for a science teacher to know what these practices are, I really believe that the teacher has to get in there and experience it for (themself).”
Brook is constantly trying to educate herself and has worked in a microbiology lab, a molecular biology lab, and now on this dig.
“When I look at all of these experiences as a whole, I can see how important it is to train students to be careful, methodical data collectors; open and honest communicators who are able to discuss and defend their ideas; and good listeners so they can learn from others.”
Brook said with this dig specifically, she learned a lot by working and talking with other scientists and “having those scientists literally get down in the dirt with me.”
For Brook, it reinforced the importance of team work and effective, productive and academic conversation, skills which she requires of her students when they work in pairs and teams.
“I think these skills transcend science and are necessary for all of my students — whether they will pursue science as a career or not — to be productive, mindful adults,” she added.
Brook resides in Rochester Hills with her two children.