Fossils

• What are fossils?

  The remains of organisms from millions years ago and are found in rocks. They provide evidence of early life and could have been formed in many ways
• How is a fossil of a bat formed?

  Due to hard parts of the animals not decaying
• How is a fossil of a fish formed?

  By parts of its body being replaced by minerals
• How is the fossil of a bee formed?

  Pollen were preserved in amber - the amber lacked some of the conditions needed for decay to happen
• What is extinction?

  When every member of a species dies out.
• Extinction can happen due to an organism's inability to adapt ad die because of?

  • Increased competition
  • New predators
  • Changes in the environment
  • New diseases
  • Alternately, a "mass extinction event" can happen, for example the extinction of the dinosaurs
• Fossilised records can provide a useful way of observing species that once lived, however what can be a problem?

  Many early forms of life only had soft bodies and the few remaining traces of them have been destroyed by geological activity. This makes it difficult for scientists to know what happened in the distance past