Subscribe

3rd grade · Science · Unit 9 of 12

Texas Fossils

What fossils tell us about life and places long ago, including fossils found in Texas.

What your child practices

Practices how fossils form and what they show about past living things and environments, with common Texas fossils: dinosaur tracks along the Paluxy River, ammonites and other sea shells from when an ocean covered much of Texas, petrified wood, and mammoth bones at Waco.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 3.12(D) · fossils as evidence of past living things and environments, including common Texas fossils

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Fossils are remains or traces of living things from long ago, like bones, shells and tracks.
  2. Seashell, fish and coral fossils on dry land mean a sea once covered it.
  3. Petrified wood is wood that slowly turned to stone.

Example: Mammoth bones are found near a Texas river. What does that show? Bones stay where an animal died. So mammoths were there long ago. Answer: mammoths once lived there

Texas Fossils in Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 9 of 12 in 3rd grade Science, after Animal Survival and before Sun, Earth, Moon & Planets.

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: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

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

    Palm leaf fossils in a cold place show it was once…

    • underwater ice
    • warm
    • in space
    • frozen

  2. Question 2

    Coiled shell fossils common in Texas rocks are…

    • ammonites
    • mammoths
    • leaves
    • dinosaur eggs

  3. Question 3

    Amber can hold a fossil of…

    • an insect
    • a mountain
    • a cloud
    • a whale

  4. Question 4

    A fossil is…

    • a type of cloud
    • a modern toy
    • the remains or trace of a living thing from long ago
    • a new rock

  5. Question 5

    What can fossils of fish and coral together tell us?

    • It was a desert
    • It was a glacier
    • There was once a warm sea
    • It was a forest fire

  6. Question 6

    A fish fossil is found on a mountain. The area was once…

    • a desert
    • a city
    • under water
    • a glacier

More 3rd grade