What kind of fossil do you think this is?
How old is it?
How do you think it was formed?
Answers:
What kind of fossil do you think this is?
This is a fossilized trilobite, an extinct arthropod. Arthropods are the same phylum that contains spiders, butterflies, and lobsters, among others. Trilobites were a large family, with over 20000 different species!
How old is it?
Trilobites died out in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, so this trilobite is at least 252 million years old.
How do you think it was formed?
There are many different ways fossils are formed, and therefore kinds of fossils, including whole-body fossils, molds and casts, and perimineralized fossils, which occur when groundwater seeps into an animal's remains and replaces the animal tissues with minerals from the water. Other types of fossils can be formed from footprints and trackways, called trace fossils.
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