FOSSIL HUNTER

I am a fossil hunter just like Mary Anning who found the first dinosaur bones ever 200 years ago. It is amaaazzzing what I have found near our house in Drakes Broughton. It all started when Ed found a Devil's Toenail in our garden. A Devil's Toenail is what people used to call a fossil called a GRYPHAEA. A gryphaea is a creature that lived 200 MILLION YEARS AGO when the dinosaurs lived on the Earth. It looked a bit like an oyster. It is now EXTINCT.

Ed told us where he used to find lots of gryphaeas when he was a boy. He told us to look near the fishing pond. Daddy and I went fossil hunting. We took tools like hand forks, trowels, knives and a hammer. I felt like a real PALEONTOLOGIST. We found lots of gryphaeas.

When Mummy, Libby and I went to pick blackberries I started to look for fossils on the farmer's track. I found this amazing fossil. There are lots of tiny fossil shells in this piece of rock and there is also something that looks like a fly.

 

 

MICROSCOPE

I am very excited to have my new microscope. It is amazing to see things really closely. These are the things I have examined so far:

PLANT CELLS
I have looked at the skin of an onion and seen the CELLS. Inside each cell is a NUCLEUS.

CREATURES
You have to cut the things you see under a microscope really really small and they have to be a bit see through. I found a wasp and cut a tiny piece of its wing off and looked at it. Ed brought us a sample of pond water from his pond. We saw some little tiny creatures scooting about under the microscope. We couldn't see them when we just looked with our eyes. Amaaaaazzzzing!


CRYSTALS

I also looked at CRYSTALS. I love crystals and like finding them on the ground. Under my microscope I looked at two different types of sand, salt crystals and sand crystals. I could see the flat and square shapes of the crystals.

Me collecting sand samples

MY LABORATORY

I love science! I have turned my bedroom into a lab. I have a blackboard for writing ideas and my experiments. I have science books, a specimen box, a microscope and a magnifying glass. I am going to do lots of experiments in my lab.