ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Fossil

A fossil is a really old thing that was once alive, like a plant or an animal. It's like a time machine that tells us what life was like a long, long time ago.

Imagine you're playing in the sandbox and you find a seashell. It looks really cool and different from the shells you normally see at the beach. You might think it's special, so you keep it.

A fossil is like a super special version of that seashell. The seashell in the sandbox is probably just a few days or weeks old, but a fossil is millions or even billions of years old!

When a plant or animal dies, it usually decays and disappears over time. But sometimes, the remains get buried under dirt, mud, or even rocks. Over a very long time, the remains turn into rock and become preserved.

Now, scientists can dig up these rocks with the fossils inside and study them. They can figure out what the animal or plant looked like, how it lived, and what it ate.

Fossils can teach us a lot about the history of our planet and how living things have changed over time. Pretty cool, right?