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What the Quarry Held is a free printable Grade 3 science worksheet on comparing fossil organisms with living ones to infer a past environment, aligned to NGSS performance expectation 3-LS4-1. It prints 7 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask different questions, so no two students in the class work from the same page. Print it from the browser or download it as a PDF — no account, no email.

Set 19 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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What the Quarry Held

3-LS4-1

NameDate

Read the record, then answer the questions.

1.Read the record, then answer the questions.

What the Quarry Held

A list of fossils found in one rock layer at a quarry, from the museum's record card. FOSSILS IN ONE LAYER Ammonites ............ 24 Sea urchins .......... 11 Fish scales .......... 7 Fern fronds .......... 0 Land animal bones .... 0 The rock is a fine gray limestone.

  1. 1. How many land animal bones were found?
  2. 2. What kinds of living thing are in this layer?
  3. 3. What does that suggest about this place long ago?
  4. 4. How many ammonites were found?
2.Mammoth bones are found with thick woolly hair. How was a mammoth unlike a living elephant?
  • A.It could fly
  • B.It had thick hair for a much colder climate
  • C.It lived in the sea
3.Why compare a fossil with a living organism?
  • A.A living relative shows how the fossil organism probably lived
  • B.To make the fossil heavier
  • C.To see which is older
4.A layer has fossils of fish but no land animals. What was this place like then?
  • A.It was a forest
  • B.It was under water
  • C.It was a dry desert
5.Fossil coral is found on a hillside far from the sea. What does that suggest?
  • A.The coral walked there
  • B.The land was once under a warm shallow sea
  • C.Coral grows on hills
6.A fossil footprint has three toes and is the size of a dinner plate. What does it tell you?
  • A.The rock is new
  • B.A bird is still nesting here
  • C.A large animal once walked across soft ground here
7.Some fossils are of organisms with no living species at all. What does that tell you?
  • A.Fossils are not real
  • B.Every kind of living thing is still alive
  • C.Some kinds of living thing that once lived have died out

LessonPrint · 3-LS4-1 · Set 19 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — What the Quarry Held

Set 19. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. No land animal bones at all. 2. Sea creatures: ammonites, sea urchins and fish. 3. It was under the sea, because only sea creatures are fossilized here. 4. 24 ammonites.
  2. 2.It had thick hair for a much colder climate
  3. 3.A living relative shows how the fossil organism probably lived
  4. 4.It was under water
  5. 5.The land was once under a warm shallow sea
  6. 6.A large animal once walked across soft ground here
  7. 7.Some kinds of living thing that once lived have died out

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to 3-LS4-1 of the Next Generation Science Standards.