Core Skills Analysis
Earth Science and Geology
- BJ learned that fossils are preserved remains, impressions, or traces of prehistoric organisms and provide evidence of ancient life.
- BJ explored how sediment can bury remains, accumulate in layers, compact, and eventually form sedimentary rock.
- BJ learned that groundwater minerals can fill spaces in bones during permineralisation, helping preserve them over millions of years.
- BJ connected Australia's geological maps with the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs lived, and learned that much of the country contains rocks from that era.
Palaeontology and Biology
- BJ learned that fossils can include bones, teeth, shells, footprints, and impressions of plants or feathers.
- BJ discovered that shells are among the fossils most commonly found and that many organisms leave no preserved evidence.
- BJ explored how fossil evidence can help scientists investigate ancient organisms’ appearance, behaviour, diets, and habitats.
- BJ learned that fossilisation depends partly on an organism’s environment, including whether remains are buried quickly and protected from weathering, scavengers, and decomposition.
Scientific Inquiry and Evidence
- By learning about moulds, casts, and impressions, BJ encountered different ways evidence of past life can be preserved.
- BJ learned that footprints and other impressions can reveal information about prehistoric organisms even when they are not preserved as bones.
- BJ explored how palaeontologists use fossils as evidence to reason about ancient life and environments.
- BJ participated in an expert-led educational webinar from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, engaging with palaeontology through specialist information.
Tips
Tips: Help BJ build on the webinar with a small fossil-investigation sequence. First, compare pictures of a fossil bone, shell, footprint, and plant impression, asking what each could tell a palaeontologist. Next, make a simple sediment model by pressing a shell or leaf into layered damp sand or clay, then discuss how burial and layers relate to fossil formation. BJ could map Australian Mesozoic rock regions using a geological map and connect the locations to the webinar’s discussion of dinosaur-era rocks. Finish by having BJ create a museum-style exhibit label explaining one fossil type, how it might form, and what evidence it offers about ancient life.
Book Recommendations
- Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne: A popular adventure for young readers that can spark further interest in dinosaurs and prehistoric life.
Try This Next
- Fossil evidence worksheet: Match bones, shells, footprints, and impressions to clues they might reveal about ancient life.
- Draw and label a fossilisation sequence, from rapid burial by sediment to mineral-filled remains in rock.
- Write a palaeontologist’s museum label for a fossil, describing what it is and what scientists could learn from it.