What can fossils tell us
What can fossils tell us
Fossils give us information about how animals and plants lived in the past.
Once people began to recognise that some fossils looked like living animals and plants, they gradually began to understand what they were. They realised they were actually the ancestors of today's plants and animals.
By studying plesiosaur fossils, palaeontologists learned that these extinct marine reptiles swam in the warm seas of the Jurassic Period, 165 million years ago.
Some fossils are easy to identify and look like plants and animals alive today.
While we can easily recognise and identify some fossils, many fossils represent animals that no longer exist on Earth. We only know about extinct groups like dinosaurs, ammonites and trilobites through fossils.
A fossil sea urchin
A fossilised gastropod
A fossil fern
Some animals and plants are only known to us as fossils.
By studying the fossil record we can tell how long life has existed on Earth, and how different plants and animals are related to each other. Often we can work out how and where they lived, and use this information to find out about ancient environments.
Tyrannosaurus rex's skull
Ammonites are a well known fossil
Fossil of a trilobite, a group of extinct marine arthropods
