Fossils Lesson 57 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 A fossil is a message from a living thing that died long ago, usually more than 10,000 years ago. 1 It can be a bone or shell turned to stone, a print of a leaf, or even a footprint. 2 Most fossils form when a dead animal or plant is buried quickly in mud or sand, before it rots or gets eaten. 3 Layer after layer piles on top, the mud slowly turns to rock, and minerals soak into the bones and shells. 4 Picture Mary Anning, a girl from a poor family in Lyme Regis, hunting along stormy cliffs in the early 1800s. 5 She found the first complete ichthyosaur skeletons, giant sea reptiles, and gentlemen scientists wrote papers about her finds, often without her name. 6 Because so few living things are buried just right, only a tiny fraction ever become fossils. 7 Still, they tell us that many dinosaurs had feathers and that birds are living dinosaurs. 8 A fossil is the preserved remains or trace of a living thing from long ago, usually over 10,000 years old. 9 Most fossils form when a dead plant or animal is quickly buried in mud or sand, which later turns to rock. 10 Only a tiny fraction of living things ever become fossils. 11 Trace fossils record what animals did, such as footprints, burrows and even fossil dung. 12 Ammonites were sea creatures with coiled shells, related to squid, and are very common fossils. 13 Mary Anning, a working-class woman from Lyme Regis, found the first complete ichthyosaur skeletons in the early 1800s. 14 Some fossils are used to date rocks, because the species lived only for a short time but spread widely. 15 Some fossils keep soft parts: insects trapped in amber, and woolly mammoths frozen in Siberian ice. 16 The first dinosaur to be scientifically named was Megalosaurus, in England in 1824. 17 Many dinosaurs had feathers, and birds are living dinosaurs. 18 Long before science, people explained fossils with legends, such as griffins, perhaps from beaked dinosaur skulls found in the deserts of Central Asia, or "snakestones" from ammonites. ← previous Soilnext → Deep time and the story of life↑ back to Geography This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/57-fossils/