Cutter stood in front of the class as he held his usual large cup of coffee, trying not to think about how few classes there were left now before he and Connor would be teaching under their house arrest, “good morning,” he said with a nod as they started, “this week we’re going to be over fossils, which play a very important part in understanding evolution,”

“A fossil is a preserved remain, impression or trace of any once-living thing from a past ecological age,” he explained, “such examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants,” he said, nodding over at Connor with a smile that he could continue the lecture.

Connor nodded as he started his part of the class, walking to the front of the class as he spoke, glancing at the plate of latkes that had been on the desk when they arrived. They looked good and he hadn't had breakfast yet so they were definitely tempting him a good bit just then.

“Fossils give us a useful insight into the history of life on Earth. They can teach us where life and humans came from, show us how the Earth and our environment have changed through geological time, and how continents, now widely separated, were once connected. Fossils provide important evidence for evolution and the adaptation of plants and animals to their environments. Fossil evidence provides a record of how creatures evolved and how this process can be represented by a ‘tree of life’, showing that all species are related to each other.”

“Fossils can also be used to date rocks. Through the process of evolution, different kinds of fossils occur in rocks of different ages, enabling geologists to use fossils to understand geological history. For geologists, fossils are one of the most important tools for age correlation. Ammonites, trilobites, and molluscs for example, make excellent guide fossils for stratigraphy; they can be used to determine the relative age of two or more layers of rock, or strata, that are in different places within the same country or somewhere else in the world. Fossils are very much like snapshots that show us what the world looked like millions of years ago. The wealth of information that fossils, of all types, can give us is why they are so important to many fields of evolutionary science.”

Connor smiled and nodded as he handed the lecture over to Cutter so he could wrap up with anything else that he wanted to add to the lecture.

“For the rest of the class I would like you to work on your worksheets,” Cutter smiled as he picked up with the class, “and as always Mr. Temple and myself are here to answer any questions that you may have,”