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Fish also lived when dinosaurs roamed Earth. Fossils of fish bones are
found in rock. Fish fossils are found far from the ocean, lakes, and rivers.
Sometimes when fish died, they fell to the bottom of the ocean. When
sediments
covered the dead fish, the same thing happened to the fish
that happened to Sue. Slowly, over thousands of years, the fish bones
turned to stone as the sediment around the fish turned to rock.
Years later, strong earth forces lifted the ocean floor where the fish
fossil formed. The fish fossil was lifted
by these strong forces to a new location
high in the mountains. That’s why
fossils of sea shells and fish can be
found in the hills far from the ocean
where they lived millions
of years earlier.
Fossils provide us with
evidence
about the kinds of plants and animals
that lived on Earth millions of years before there were people to see
them. How do you think the environment was different when these
fossil trees were alive 250 million years ago?
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