This module meets the The National Research Council's standards in the following ways:
- Earth as a System. Students learn about Earth as a system with subsystems that relate physical and biological processes and their associated features and organisms.
- Earth History. Students are introduced to the concept of geologic time, specifically in regard to the Mesozoic Era and its three periods;
- Earth in the Solar System. Students learn that Earth as a planet is just one of a number of bodies that orbit the Sun and that some of these other bodies may affect the Earth's ecological systems directly through asteroid/comet impacts;
- Science as Inquiry. Students are introduced to the nature of scientific inquiry through a set of multiple working hypotheses about dinosaur extinction;
- Earth Composition. Students learn about sedimentary rocks as a matrix for dinosaur fossils;
- Changes in Earth and Sky. Students learn that Earth is dynamic, undergoing changes in continent-ocean configurations, climates, sea level, and regional environments
