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What you will learn from this videoWhat you will learn
- Fossils are evidence of past life, such as bones, teeth, and footprints.
- The collection of fossils in the Earth's crust and their placement in chronological order is called the fossil record.
- Scientists study the fossil record to understand how life on Earth has changed over time.
- Discussion Questions
Before Video
How does a changing environment affect plants and animals that live there? ANSWERWhen the environment changes in ways that affect a location’s characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, and others die.
Most will decompose, while some are buried and compressed in sedimentary rock, forming fossils over long periods of time.
Some kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth don’t exist anymore. Examples of these are dinosaurs and other extinct species.
Fossils tell scientists what an organism looked like and about the environment that existed when the animal lived.
Evidence of animal activity like footprints, burrows, and coprolites.
Molds, casts, replacement (like petrified wood), trapped in amber, and mummified.
After Video
How are fossils discovered? ANSWEREarth processes like erosion and earthquakes can move sediment from one location to another, often uncovering and exposing fossils. Scientists also concentrate their search efforts in areas that are known to have lots of fossils, like Utah.
Trace fossils provide information about how an organism lived, including but not limited to how it moved, what it ate, and where it lived.
Over time, sediment forms layers beneath the Earth’s surface. The deeper fossils are found in the Earth’s crust, the older they are. The closer to the surface fossils are found, the younger they are.
The fossil record provides evidence that organisms that are extinct today once existed. It also gives a chronological history for how organisms have evolved in water and on land.
Organisms have become progressively more complex over time. Early in Earth’s history, organisms were very simple, many made of a single cell. As millions of years have passed, organisms have evolved to be more complex, with human beings the most complex of all!
Organisms living in the water all possessed characteristics that allowed them to breathe underwater, such as gills. Over time, these organisms adapted to live successfully on land with structures like lungs and legs.
- Vocabulary
- Fossil DEFINE
Preserved remains or traces of ancient plant and animal life.
- Trace fossil DEFINE
Impression or other preserved sign of activity such as feeding, scratching, burrowing, walking, or resting.
- Body fossils DEFINE
Preserved remains of the plant or animal itself, or the preserved parts of the animal or plant like bones, teeth, and shells, or the imprint of parts of the animal or plant.
- Mold fossils DEFINE
Hollow space left in a rock by animal or plant remains that have dissolved.
- Cast fossils DEFINE
When molds fill in with minerals or sediments that later harden, the resulting fossil is called a cast.
- Permineralization DEFINE
Groundwater fills pore spaces in animal or plant remains and deposits minerals. Most dinosaur body fossils are formed this way.
- Strata DEFINE
Layers of sedimentary rock that compile and compress over time that can trap fossils within them.
- Transitional fossil DEFINE
A fossil that provides evidence for organisms transitioning from living in water to land.
- Evolution DEFINE
Evidence that organisms have changed over long periods of time.
- Paleontologist DEFINE
A scientist that studies the fossil record to better understand life on Earth.
- Fossil DEFINE
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