Fossil Basics
The name for the remains or traces of ancient living things.
What is a fossil?
An ancient sea animal that had a hard outer shell and many body sections.
What is a trilobite?
The meat-eating dinosaur is Utah’s state fossil.
What is Allosaurus fragilis?
This place has about 1,500 dinosaur bones still in the rock wall.
What is the Quarry Exhibit Hall at Dinosaur National Monument?
This huge ancient lake once covered much of western Utah.
What is Lake Bonneville?
A type of scientist studies fossils.
What is a paleontologist?
This part of Utah was once covered by a shallow Cambrian sea.
What is western Utah?
This famous Utah quarry has many Allosaurus fossils.
What is Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry?
This Utah quarry is known for having many predator fossils.
What is Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry?
This modern lake is a leftover part of ancient Lake Bonneville.
What is the Great Salt Lake?
An animal or plant no longer exists anywhere on Earth.
What is extinct?
These curled-shell sea animals were related to squid and octopuses.
What are ammonites?
This national monument near Vernal has a wall of dinosaur bones.
What is Dinosaur National Monument?
This area near Delta, Utah, is famous for trilobite fossils.
What is the House Range or Wheeler Formation?
This large Ice Age animal from Utah was related to modern tree sloths.
What is a giant ground sloth?
Three things fossils can teach scientists about ancient Utah.
What is climate, habitat, animals, plants, or whether Utah was underwater?
The number of trilobite species found in Utah.
What is more than 500?
This dinosaur had plates on its back and lived during the Jurassic Period.
What is Stegosaurus?
This type of place protects fossils so people can learn from them.
What is a museum, park, monument, or protected fossil site?
This ground sloth discovered near Provo was about the size of this animal.
What is a bison?
This is why fossils are sometimes called clues from the past.
What is because they give evidence about ancient life?
Finding sea fossils in Utah tells scientists this about the land long ago.
What was Utah once underwater?
This dinosaur’s name means “Utah thief.”
What is Utahraptor?
This city is near Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.
What is Vernal?
What is climate change, changing habitats, or hunting?
This is one possible reason many Ice Age animals became extinct.