In Explore Fossils! With 25 Great Projects, readers can expand their dinosaur obsessions into learning opportunities that take them beyond Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and even Tyrannosaurus rex to other animals, plants, and microbes that lived long before humans. Explore Fossils! introduces young readers to the history of life on Earth as revealed by fossils. Kids learn how fossils form and about the different types of fossils and the world of long ago—its landscape and the plants and animals that lived then. Scientists use radiometric dating to test fossils to discover when they were made, what organisms made them, what those organisms used for energy, what killed them, and a whole lot of other information. All from rocks! That’s a lot of information stored under our feet. Activities include creating plaster fossils, using popcorn to illustrate radiometric dating, and exploring what might have caused mass extinctions by making a lava flow and simulating an asteroid impact. By studying the past, not only do students meet amazing plants and animals, they are also encouraged to consider their own role in geological time to make thoughtful hypotheses about the future.

In Explore Fossils! With 25 Great Projects, readers can expand their dinosaur obsessions into learning opportunities that take them beyond Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and even Tyrannosaurus rex to other animals, plants, and microbes that lived long before humans. Explore Fossils! introduces young readers to the history of life on Earth as revealed by fossils. Kids learn how fossils form and about the different types of fossils and the world of long ago—its landscape and the plants and animals that lived then. Scientists use radiometric dating to test fossils to discover when they were made, what organisms made them, what those organisms used for energy, what killed them, and a whole lot of other information. All from rocks! That’s a lot of information stored under our feet. Activities include creating plaster fossils, using popcorn to illustrate radiometric dating, and exploring what might have caused mass extinctions by making a lava flow and simulating an asteroid impact. By studying the past, not only do students meet amazing plants and animals, they are also encouraged to consider their own role in geological time to make thoughtful hypotheses about the future.

The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular creatures of classical mythology Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants—these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact—in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans. As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground. Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.

You stare at the side of a rock wall near the ocean. Suddenly, you notice a spiral outline in the rock. You found an ammonite fossil! You are filled with awe as you think about how this shelled sea animal might have lived millions of years ago. Find out how fossils form, where they can be found, and about some of the most amazing fossil discoveries. Then learn how you can find fossils too!

A fun and fact-filled activity book about discovering and collecting, about the history of the Earth, and the record of life we find on its surface, children will revel in this guide to over 50 sites where they can find something Paleozoic. Also included are a dozen amazing science activities and a complete guide to fossil hunting. Ages 5-8

You stare at the side of a rock wall near the ocean. Suddenly, you notice a spiral outline in the rock. You found an ammonite fossil! You are filled with awe as you think about how this shelled sea animal might have lived millions of years ago. Find out how fossils form, where they can be found, and about some of the most amazing fossil discoveries. Then learn how you can find fossils too!

Dinosaurs roamed Earth between 230 million and 65 million years ago. That's not only long before the present day, but also long before Homo sapiens were around at all. Without fossils, we might not know anything about these fierce and interesting prehistoric animals. Young explorers will learn how fossils form, the different kinds of dinosaur fossils that scientists study, and just what we've learned from these cool fossil finds. Detailed photographs aid readers' understanding while fact boxes add more context to key science concepts.