What do we learn from fossils?

What do we learn from fossils?

We can learn a lot from fossils.

Fossils can tell us what different parts of the world were like a long time ago.

©American Museum of Natural History

If fossils of sea creatures are found in a desert, we will know that there used to be water there.

Image available under GNU Free Documentation License

If fossils of tropical plants are found in a cold area, we learn that it was warm there a long time ago.

If fossils of tropical plants are found in a cold area, we learn that it was warm there a long time ago.

Fossils can also teach us about plants and animals that are now extinct, like dinosaurs.

Fossils are our only record that these plants and animals existed.
Fossils can tell us a lot about an extinct plant or animal, like:

how big it was
what it ate
where it lived
how many years ago it lived

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© 2007 D. Longo, R.Nous, A. Pieniezny, M. Thomson, C. VanHoesen