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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 8 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. What does that suggest about this place long ago?
  2. 2. What would you expect in a layer that was once a forest?
  3. 3. What kinds of living thing are in this layer?
  4. 4. What claim does this record support?
2.Some fossils are of organisms with no living species at all. What does that tell you?
  • A.Some kinds of living thing that once lived have died out
  • B.Fossils are not real
  • C.Every kind of living thing is still alive
3.Mammoth bones are found with thick woolly hair. How was a mammoth unlike a living elephant?
  • A.It lived in the sea
  • B.It had thick hair for a much colder climate
  • C.It could fly
4.Fossil sea urchins look almost like living ones. What can you say about how they lived?
  • A.They lived in deserts
  • B.They lived in the air
  • C.They probably lived on the sea floor, as living ones do
5.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
6.Why compare a fossil with a living organism?
  • A.To make the fossil heavier
  • B.A living relative shows how the fossil organism probably lived
  • C.To see which is older
7.A layer has fossils of fish but no land animals. What was this place like then?
  • A.It was a dry desert
  • B.It was under water
  • C.It was a forest

LessonPrint · 3-LS4-1 · Set 8 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — What the Quarry Held

Set 8. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. It was under the sea, because only sea creatures are fossilized here. 2. Fern fronds and land animal bones rather than sea urchins. 3. Sea creatures: ammonites, sea urchins and fish. 4. Fossils give evidence of the organisms and the environments of long ago.
  2. 2.Some kinds of living thing that once lived have died out
  3. 3.It had thick hair for a much colder climate
  4. 4.They probably lived on the sea floor, as living ones do
  5. 5.A large animal once walked across soft ground here
  6. 6.A living relative shows how the fossil organism probably lived
  7. 7.It was under water

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