A fossil footprint and a fossil tooth answer different questions. This set helps students name those differences, follow preservation processes, and use rock layers to build careful explanations of past life.
DOWNLOAD THE 7 FREE FOSSILS WORKSHEETS
PLAY THE FREE FOSSILS ADVENTURE
Meet Dinoling, your vocabulary training guide
Dinoling is patient, adventurous, observant. This Gemling guides learners through Lostbone Jungle and connects to the specimen Petrified Wood. The same approved character appears in the printable packet and its matching science adventure.
What the seven worksheets cover
Start with the main Fossils vocabulary worksheet. Then work through these six lessons in adventure order:
- What Fossils Are
- How Fossils Form
- Types of Fossils
- Rock Layers & Relative Time
- Reconstructing Past Life
- Fossils & Earth's Changing Story
The overview introduces fossil, organism, sediment, burial, trace fossil, body fossil, layer, relative age, extinct, evidence. Each lesson narrows the focus to its own science words and ideas.
Every worksheet combines a short Gemling teaching note, a word bank, definition matching, three word-in-context questions, and a written field mission. Dinoling closes each lesson by welcoming students to the corresponding adventure setting.
A classroom science field trip, starting at your desk
Give partners two imaginary museum labels: preserved shell and preserved trackway. Ask what each label tells them about a body or an activity. Revisit the labels when students reach the reconstruction lesson and separate observations from inferences.
Read the Gemling note aloud, model one vocabulary match, and let partners explain their word choices. Use the written mission to check understanding before entering the next online setting. After the seven pages, the Training Complete invitation gives students a clear next step into the FREE online Excavating Adventure.
Excavating Adventures is The Science Field Trip Company. These resources help transform classroom science into a field-trip-style experience: prepare with vocabulary, explore a science setting, explain evidence, and carry curiosity into real-world observation.
Teaching point to make clear
Fossils are not limited to dinosaurs, and most organisms never fossilize. The oldest-on-the-bottom rule needs undisturbed sedimentary layers; it is not a shortcut for every outcrop.
Download and printing details
The free PDF contains 16 separate US Letter pages: one teacher guide, seven student worksheets, one Training Complete page, and seven matching answer keys. Print at 100% scale. The activities are black-and-white friendly; students do not need color to answer. Sample written answers allow for other scientifically accurate responses.
Take the training into the free adventure
Dinoling invites your class into Lostbone Jungle. Use the exact subject adventure below, pause to discuss clues, and encourage students to revise their thinking after feedback. The game needs an internet connection but no purchase, account, or physical kit.
ENTER THE FREE FOSSILS ADVENTURE
After the mission, the optional Discover, Identify, Collect continuation connects learning with real specimens. Finishing online does not record a physical discovery or mean that a specimen has been collected.
Free Dig Kits for Your Classroom
Extend curiosity toward hands-on science and a physical science field trip. Learn about the planned classroom kit program and its current availability. Campaign signup is not open yet; downloading this resource does not reserve or include kits.
FREE DIG KITS FOR YOUR CLASSROOM
Keep exploring science
Browse all free science adventures or explore Earth Science adventures.
- Rocks & Minerals vocabulary worksheets
- Landforms vocabulary worksheets
- Animals vocabulary worksheets
Two questions to discuss with your class
Explain why a footprint and a shell can both be fossils.
A shell can preserve part of a body. A footprint can preserve a trace of activity. Both are evidence of past life.
Why must you check whether layers were disturbed before comparing their ages?
Superposition applies to undisturbed layers. A disturbance can overturn or shift layers, changing their positions.