Fantastic Fossils

Fantastic Fossils

Activity

On the piece of paper describe using pictures or words how you think fossils are made.

 

 

 

Answer:

 

1. An animal dies, its skeleton settles on the sea floor and is buried by sediment.

2.  The sediment surrounding the skeleton thickens and begins to turn to stone

3. The skeleton dissolves and a mould is formed

4. Minerals crystallise inside the mould and a cast is formed.

5. Over time the fossil rises to the surface of the earth through geological processes

 

Why are Fossils important?

Scientists spend a lot of time finding fossils and studying them

Question: Why do you think that is? What can we learn from fossils

 

 

Answer

Scientists study fossils to find out about life in the past

 

Scientists realised that some fossils look similar to plants and animals alive today

This helped scientists understand what fossils are.

They are the ancestors of living things today

 

 

Activity: Looking at Fossils

 

Below are two sets of images, the first set are images of fossils from our collections, the second are images of extant (animals that are still alive today) creatures from our collection.

You are now going to be palaeontologists and study the fossils very closely and try to guess what kind of animal you think they are from

Look at the images of the extant creatures, remember that fossils are the ancestors of these plants and animals

Try to match the fossil with the image of the living creature which is most similar. Then try to imagine what the fossil creature would have looked like when it was alive.

Draw your ideas

Remember it could be a creature that lived in a shell, a plant, a creature from the sea etc – not just a dinosaur!

Fossil Type one x 4 images

 

Left fossil type two x 2 images, middle fossil type three x 1, right fossil type four x 1 image

 

 

 Extant creature one

Extant creature two

Left x 2 extant creature 3,  right x 2 extant creature four



Answers

 
 

 This is the fossil of a sea urchin, Conulus subrotundus, that lived in the Chalk sea. This deep, warm sea covered most of Britain during the Cretaceous period, about 85 million years ago. This fossil echinoid was found near Hildersham in the middle chalk rocks of Cambridgeshire and Essex.

Fossil of an extinct ammonite Mantelliceras that lived in the Chalk sea. This deep, warm sea covered most of Britain during the Cretaceous period, about 85 million years ago. All ammonites swam, the shells sinking to the sea bed after death.
Its modern day counterpart is the nautilus a marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae.The nautilus and the ammonite are similar organisms. Both are aquatic molluscs with spiral shells.

Fossil of an extinct belemnite Actinocamax that lived in the Chalk sea during the Cretaceous period, about 85 million years ago. Fossils of this belemnite were found at Cherry Hinton and Harston in Cambridgeshire.
Its modern day counterpart is a squid, squid are cephalopods. Belemnites were squid-like animals with ten arms. Unlike modern squids, belemnites didn’t have a pair of tentacles. Like other Coleoidea (a superclass of shell-less cephalopods that includes octopus, squid and cuttlefish), belemnites had beaks, ink sacs and a tail fin.

 Fossil shell of the oyster Ostrea edulis. A bivalve mollusc from the cool Red Crag sea of the Pleistocene period that covered most of Essex about 2 million years ago. From the 19th century collection of George Stacey Gibson.  Collected at Walton, Essex.