Paleontology for Kids
Dig into fossils, dinosaurs and other prehistoric life, plus a fun little 3D dinosaur scene kids can watch turn right on the page.
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What's inside
🦴 Fossils & Digging Up the Past
Every fossil is a message from the deep past. Paleontologists are scientists who dig them up, piece them together, and read the story they tell about ancient life.
🦖 Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs walked the Earth for over 160 million years, far longer than humans have existed! Let's meet some famous ones and clear up a few myths.
🐚 Prehistoric Life
Not every prehistoric creature was a dinosaur! Long before, and long after, the dinosaurs, other amazing animals ruled the land, sea and sky.
☄️ Extinction & Deep Time
Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and life's story is written in fossils and rock layers. Sometimes that story includes disaster: huge mass extinctions that changed life forever.
Key ideas
- A fossil is the preserved remains or trace of a living thing from long ago. Most fossils form in sedimentary rock over thousands or millions of years.
- Dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era, about 252 to 66 million years ago, split into the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
- Non-avian dinosaurs died out about 66 million years ago, long before humans existed, but birds are their living descendants.
- Pterosaurs (flying reptiles) and marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs lived alongside the dinosaurs, but were not dinosaurs themselves.
- The dinosaur age ended in a mass extinction linked to a huge asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Mexico, about 66 million years ago.
Sample worksheet questions
1. The preserved remains or trace of an ancient living thing is a ____.
Answer: Fossil
2. Dinosaurs lived during which geologic era?
Answer: The Mesozoic Era
3. Were mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs dinosaurs?
Answer: No, they were reptiles
4. The crater left by the dinosaur-ending asteroid is called ____.
Answer: Chicxulub
5. Modern ____ are the living descendants of small meat-eating dinosaurs.
Answer: Birds
These are generated fresh every time. Press New Worksheet in the app for a brand-new set, with a printable answer key.
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