Fossils give us information about how animals and plants lived in the past .

Some fossils are easy to identify and look like plants and animals alive today.

While we can easily recognise and identify some fossils, many fossils represent animals that no longer exist on Earth. We only know about extinct groups like dinosaurs, ammonites and trilobites through fossils.

Some animals and plants are only known to us as fossils.

By studying the fossil record we can tell how long life has existed on Earth, and how different plants and animals are related to each other. Often we can work out how and where they lived, and use this information to find out about ancient environments.