Fernbank offers a wide variety of material that would be interesting to anyone studying science, even graduate level students.  Fernbank has an IMAX theater that is currently showing two movies that would pertain to TIG students:  Journey Into Amazing Caves and Ocean Oasis.  Ocean Oasis was filmed in Baja, California and shows how the desert land and rich sea together create an area rich in life.  Journey Into Amazing Caves takes you on a tour of caves within the Grand Canyon, Greenland glaciers, and the Mayan jungle.  It explains how caves are formed and the microorganisms that live in these caves.  Students could view either or both IMAX movies.

In addition to the movies, Fernbank currently has an exhibit called “Savage Ancient Seas.”  This exhibit includes casts of bones to create the skeletons of various prehistoric sea creatures including Mosasaurs and Plesiosaurs.  There is also a geologic timeline showing when various life forms appeared on Earth and which highlights when the animals in this exhibit inhabited the Earth – during the Cretaceous Period.  Students can also look at fossils that have been found during various eras.  There is also a map showing how the Earth looked during various time periods – including placement of continents and seas and areas of the US that were covered by deep oceans or shallow seas.  This exhibit focuses on the seas as they existed 70 million years ago.  At this time, dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and a shallow sea covered much of the North American continent.  Many of these creatures do not exist today, as they were victims of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.

Perhaps the exhibit that would be the most interesting to TIG students visiting Georgia would be the permanent exhibit A Walk Through Time in Georgia.  This exhibit features how the Earth developed and introduces the landform regions of Georgia:  the Piedmont Plateau, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Ridge and Valley, the Cumberland Plateau, the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains, and the Coast and Islands.  As you tour the regions of the exhibit, you learn about the development of Earth specific to Georgia.