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6th grade · Science · Unit 10 of 10

Earth's History & Fossils

Rock layers and fossils as a record of Earth's history.

What your child practices

Your child uses rock layers and fossils to put events in Earth's long history in order.

Alabama Course of Study content standard: 6.7 · rock layers and fossils as a record of Earth's history

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. In rock layers, lower fossils are usually older than higher ones.
  2. Hard parts, like bones and shells, become fossils most easily.
  3. We live in the Cenozoic Era.
  4. Fossils and vestigial structures, like the human tailbone, show how living things changed over time.

Example: A fossil is found in a lower rock layer. Is it older or younger than one above it? Lower layers formed first. Answer: older

Earth's History & Fossils in Alabama

In the Alabama Course of Study, this is unit 10 of 10 in 6th grade Science, after Earth's Changing Surface.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    If a layer of sea fossils lies under a layer of land fossils, the area…

    • changed from land to sea
    • never changed
    • is upside down always
    • changed from sea to land

  2. Question 2

    Fossils of early whales with small legs show…

    • legs grew from fins
    • whales descended from land animals
    • whales are fish
    • whales always lived in water

  3. Question 3

    Scientists use index fossils to…

    • measure rainfall
    • match the ages of rock layers in different places
    • find gold
    • predict the weather

  4. Question 4

    The geologic time scale divides Earth's history by…

    • seasons
    • major events in the rock and fossil record
    • presidents
    • calendar years

  5. Question 5

    Fossils of sea animals in Alabama rock show that much of the state was once…

    • covered in ice sheets
    • under the sea
    • a desert all the time
    • on the moon

  6. Question 6

    An index fossil is useful because it…

    • has no age
    • lived for a short time over a wide area
    • is very rare
    • lived everywhere forever

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