| Year 6
During lessons this week, Y6 discussed how palaeontologists can learn a lot about ancient living things by studying fossils, including where an organism lived and what it looked like.
They can also see how ancient animals and plants are related to animals that live today and how they might have evolved over time.
The children thought that scientists looking at changes in a period from the past until now could use this knowledge to help predict what further changes might happen into the future.
After input in class, the children worked at their own pace online to explore a range of different activities that explained and gave examples of the work that palaeontologists do.
Those in school were able to handle some real fossil artefacts and those at home had the opportunity to show fossils that they had found themselves. With their new-found knowledge they were then able to make sensible suggestions as to how a set of bones may have made as skeleton and what the animal might have looked like.
Despite, starting with the same set of bones, the children’s ideas of what the animal might have looked like varied wildly, demonstrating what a hard job palaeontologists have in interpreting evidence from the past.
