Fossils!!!

What is a fossil?

• A rock that is millions of years old

• The model created by scientists to study dinosaurs

• The remains of an organism studied by scientists

• An organism that has become extinct

What can scientists learn from fossils?

• What color the animal was

• What kind of covering the animals body had

• What kind of food the animal most likely ate

Which of the following is an example of how a fossil might have been formed?

• A dinosaur died in the mud and minerals filled in the bones, keeping their shape.

• A dinosaur died during a very icy storm, and its bones hardened from the cold.

• A dinosaur died in the summertime, and the hot sun made the bones strong.

• A dinosaur died near a lake and the water filled the bones, keeping their shape.

Why are there more animal fossils than plant fossils?

• Plants are eaten or rot away before they can become fossils

• Plants are smaller than animals

• There were more animals than plants

• There were no plants in ancient times

A fossil has a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth. What can you infer about the animal?

• The animal ate fruits and animals

• The animal must be related to a shark

• The animal lived in the ocean

• The animal ate mostly meat

A group of friends were hiking to the top of a mountain. When they got to the top of the mountain, they discovered several fossils of animals like the one pictured above.

What clues does the fossil give you about how the animal moved and what type of habitat it lived in?

• This animal lived at the bottom of the mountain since it was discovered at the mountain, but the mountain rose in height over time.

• This animal lived at the top of a mountain since that is the location it was discovered.

• This animal lived in a water environment such as a lake or ocean since it has bones.

• This animal lived in a water environment since it has dorsal fins.

A student creates a model to show the process of how the following fossil formed.

Which of the following should the students include in their illustration?

• The student should show people digging out the fossil to show an animal becomes a fossil the moment it is discovered.

• The student should draw a time lapse of images for each step with arrows and descriptions.

• The student should label the soil types in each layer of the illustration.

• The student should label the type of dinosaur in their image.

Which of the following steps comes first in the fossilization process and why?

• The first step is that an animal dies because once any living thing dies, it will always start the fossilization process.

• The first step is that an animal dies because once a living thing dies, it has the possibility of becoming a fossil.

• The first step is that the animal is buried by sediment because if it is buried by sediment, it will then die to become a fossil.

• The first step is that bone is slowly replaced with minerals because if they are replaced by minerals, then once it dies, it starts to fossilize.

Select all of the following steps that ARE part of the fossilization process.

• An animal dies

• The soft parts rot away or are eaten

• The bone is slowly replaced with chocolate

• The animal is buried by sediment

• An animal is frozen in ice

People who study fossils are called ____.