1. Lesson 2: Fossils
3/25/15

2. What is a fossil?
A fossil is evidence that an organism once existed in an area. Fossils can be a part of the organism's body or a trace fossil which is a mark or print left by the organism.

3. Simply put, fossils are the remains of once-living things, or the mark or imprint they leave behind in rock.

4. Discovery Education Video:
How Fossils are Made
Features the process of fossil creation. The program portrays how sediment and minerals are able to fossilize bones, leaves, shells, and animal trails.

5. Discovery Education Video:
How Fossils Form
Explores the fossilization process of skeletons, shells, and petrified trees.

6. 3 Types of Fossils:
Trace Fossils are marks or other evidence that is left behind by organisms that has become fossilized.
Imprint Fossils are created by something pressed into the soil or mud that later becomes fossilized.
Cast / Mold Fossils are remains of organisms (cast) and the imprint that they leave in the surrounding rock (mold).

7. Scientists cannot always tell the exact age of a fossil, but they can order fossils chronologically based on the rocks that they are found in.

8. Discovery Education: Fossils
Explore on Your Own:
Discovery Education: Fossils

9. What can we learn about from fossils?
Extinct Plants and Animals
When Organisms Lived
Where Organisms Lived
What the Earth Was Like
Events in Earth’s History

10. Key Questions: How is a fossil formed?
What are the three types of fossils? How are they similar? How are they different?
What can we learn from studying fossils?