Bill Nye: Fossils

Fossils comes from a Latin word that means "to dig".

• True

• False

What are fossils?

• Evidence of living things that have turned to stone.

• Evidence of living things that have turned to liquid.

Fossils tell us that over what percentage of all living things to ever inhabit the Earth have gone extinct?

• 75%

• 90%

When mud fills the impression made by a living creature and dries to form a fossil of that creature's imprint, it is called a:

• trace

• petrification

• mold

• footprint

When a plant or animal dies and leaves a mark, and the mark is then fossilized, it is called a:

• petrification

• mold

• trace

• cast

Most fossils are how old?

• hundreds of millions of years

• a few thousand years

In petrified wood, the wood is replaced with the mineral:

• feldspar

• pyrite

• silica

• mica

Most trace fossils are caused by impressions, so they get filled in, or eroded, or washed away over time

• TRUE

• FALSE

From examining a dinosaur's footprint, paleontologists can figure out (check all that apply):

• the size of the dinosaur

• what the dinosaur ate

All fossils are found in which type of rock?

• igneous

• metamorphic

• sedimentary