Our scholars group arrived at Brownie Beach, a shoreline bounded by a series of looming cliffsides, on September 29th for our CPSG Field Trip. While the beach may not seem unique at first glance, the sands hold many relics of the Miocene era from more than 17 million years ago. During the Miocene Epoch, southern Maryland was submerged under a shallow sea which was inhabited by many species of sharks, vertebrates, and invertebrates. As these animals died, their bones were buried under the seafloor sand. Throughout the years, the seafloor rose and fell until a great ice sheet melted, forming the 100ft Calvert Cliffs. Weather and erosion sometimes releases these fossils buried within the cliffs and the seafloor, which would end up on the shore. As our group surveyed the beach for fossils, I found quite a few of them, though most were barely the size of a grain of sand. Some notable ones that I found were an Isurus oxyrinchus (extinct mako shark) tooth, Sphyrna zygaena (extinct hammerhead shark) tooth, Sphyrna laveissmus (extinct hammerhead shark) tooth, Myliobatis sp. (ray denture plate fragment), and (my favorite) an unidentifiable porpoise/crocodile tooth. After going on this trip and experiencing the first semester of SGC, I believe that understanding how environmental conditions were different everywhere on Earth at different points of time and how environments were also different can help understand global change. In one of our scholars colloquiums, our groups discussed the negative impacts on human civilizations through the change of global climate. Noticing the patterns in how the environments has negatively reacted towards conditions can help us avoid recreating these conditions in the future, and the positive impacts on the environment in the past can help us practice better ways of living today. For those who are interested in the fossils found at Calvert Cliffs, towns on the Chesapeake Bay can offer information on the types of fossils in the sediments at the popular sites. Fossils tell the history of their environment, so by understanding the remains of the animals, you can understand more about the significance of these fossils and their environments.