What is a fossil?
What is a fossil?
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.
Do you know what a fossil really is? Do you know how they form? And do you know what they tell us about the past? Confused? Read on!
Learn the basics
Fossils are the remains of once living animals or plants. People have been finding fossils in rocks for thousands of years, but until quite recently they didn't understand what they were.
Today we recognise that the fossils we find in rocks represent the ancestors of the animals and plants that are alive today.
This is the lower jawbone of the Megalosaurus, the meat-eater dinosaur that once lived in the Oxfordshire area during the Jurassic period. Look at those teeth!
