TXMOST Timewalk Young Explorers’ Guide
Find the Symbols! Throughout Timewalk, there are a few important
symbols. What can you learn from them?
These symbols indicate
that an animal once
lived in Texas
This symbol means “Extinction Event”.
Timewalk has 3 of the 5 major extinction
events marked.
Name one Period when an extinction event occurred.
Name a species that once lived in Texas
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The green Archaeopteryx indicates a “transitional form”. That means that the animal has some
characteristics of one class of animal and some characteristics of another. There is a pattern
of transition which looks like this:
Invertebrate -> fish -> amphibian -> reptile -> dinosaur* -> bird
Name a transitional form fossil. __________________________________________
What two forms do you think it is between? ______________________ and __________________________
*Mammals also developed from reptiles.
Fill in the blank! Read the signs to fill in these blanks.
Earth’s sky used to be ___________________.
Pangaea formed during the _____________________ period.
Tyrannosaurus rex’s brain size indicates they were
______________.
Lucy was _________ feet tall and live around __________ million
years ago.
Bone Wars!
In the late 1800s Othniel Marsh
and Edward Cope became rival
paleontologists. Their rivalry was
so vicious that it became known as
the ‘Bone Wars’
Their race to outdo each other
eventually led to over 26,000 new
species discoveries.
Glyptodons went extinct because they were over hunted by
Othniel Marsh was the first
paleontologist
to
describe
Triceratops and Stegosaurus.
___________________.
Edward Cope discovered
Coeleophysis.
FUN FACT: Dinosaurs only lived on land. However, there
were marine reptiles and flying reptiles.
This is Edward Cope. Can
you find him hidden in
Timewalk? Check here
when you find him.
When did it live? Match the animal with the time period in which it lived, Draw a line to
match the match!
Triceratops
Eoraptor
Permian
Devonian
Bothriolepis
Pleistocene
Megalodon
Triassic
Seymouria
Miocene
Eremotherium
Fun Fact: Fossils are not always
bones that have turned to stone,
Sometimes evidence remains in
the rock record of ancient activity.
These are called trace fossils.
Footprints are one type of trace
fossil.
Cretaceous
Footprints are clues paleontologists and
archaeologists use to understand the life in
the past.
Mary Leakey and her team discovered that
Australopithecus afarensis could walk upright
based on footprints found at Laetoli, Ethiopia.
Look at the footprints on the left and write a story about
what you think might have happened.
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Coeleophysis
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Iguanadon (Duck-bill)