Different types of fossils

There are lots of different types of fossils to be found

When most people think of fossils they think of dinosaur skeletons and large bones, but there are many different types of fossils to be found. Palaeontologists, people who study fossils, divide them into two major types: body fossils and trace fossils.

Casts of footprints made by Megalosaurus, taken from a huge fossilised trackway discovered at Ardley Quarry, Oxfordshire, in 1997.

Body fossils show us what a plant or animal looked like

The first type, body fossils, are the fossilised remains of an animal or plant, like bones, shells and leaves. These can be mould and cast fossils, like most of the fossilised dinosaur skeletons and big bones we see, replacement fossils, like petrified wood, or whole body fossils - mammoths caught in ice, or insects trapped in amber.

Petrified wood

Mammoth

Insects in amber

Footprints and coprolites are trace fossils: they show us how an animal lived

The second type of fossil records the activity of an animal. Known as trace fossils, these include footprints, trackways, and coprolites (fossil poo!).