Activity 3: Do at School!

Time travel to ancient New York!

Match the fossils on your rock with the fossil pictures here.

Circle all of the pictures of fossils that you find on your rock.

Which fossils do you see lots of and which ones do you see few of?

Now, draw a picture of what you think New York was like 380 million years ago.

If you could go back in time, what would you have seen living in your neighborhood? What would your neighborhood have been like? Water or land? Fact: You can find fossils just like the ones you've been looking at in rocks all over Upstate New York.

Main Message: This activity demonstrates that particular fossil organisms lived in particular kinds of environments and that clues about environment are preserved in the sediment.

Connections: Fossils (activity 1) and settling sediment (activity 2) are what we use to reconstruct ancient environments.