A Fossil Hunting Dino-Adventure The Let's Go Club

This is The Let's Go Club but mini!

Expect making, exploring, super-sizing,

dancing, fact-finding and laughing.

We've only got a few minutes,

so get ready for more fun from The Let's Go Club.

-Hi, I'm Jamie.

-And I'm Adam.

Today, we're going to go looking for fossils.

BOTH: Let's go.

This is Will.

He knows everything about rocks and fossils

so he's going to show us how to be fossil hunters.

Hi, Jamie. Hi, Adam. I've got a really special rock here.

There's something on here. Can anyone see what it is?

-Is it a footprint?

-It's like a footprint, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Can you see these footprints here? Can you see that?

With one, two, three toes. There's some dinosaur footprints.

Where do you think it might have come from?

The dinosaurs leave the footprints on the beach

and then they were staying there for a long time

and turned into this rock.

That's right. Half the dinosaur made it in the soft sand.

It then got turned into rock,

buried really deep and eventually ended up in the top of these cliffs,

these yellow rocks at the top,

dropped out onto the beach and we find them as fossils.

It's 165 million years old.

Today, we're going to go and look for some fossils

from the bottom of the cliff that are even older.

-Can we go looking for fossils now?

-I think that's a really good idea.

I've got some really special kit for you guys today.

I've got a bucket each. There's one for you, Adam.

A bucket for you as well, Jamie.

I've also got some really nice checklists just here

with some pictures on it of fossils we might find.

So these are the fossils from the sea shells

that used to live in the ocean that once covered

all of this part of where we are today.

Could you tell which rock are fossils?

That's a really great question.

What we need to do is find some of the grey rocks on this beach.

These are the ones that might have the fossils shells in.

Sometimes on the outside, but quite often on the inside.

So if you find any of these grey rocks

with lumps or bumps, funny shapes,

put them in your bucket and we'll have a look at them.

-Well, what have you got, Jamie?

-I found this fossil.

You see this heart shape in here?

This is one of the ones you call a Bivalve.

Can you find Bivalve on your checklist, guys?

Look at this one here. This is a really nice one.

One of the coiled-up ones that we call the Ammonite. Yeah?

Have you seen this one on your checklist?

When it was alive, there was a squid that lived

at this bottom end of the shell here,

swimming around in our ocean.

Sometimes, some of our fossils

are actually still hidden inside the rock.

-So can we smash one of them open?

-We could do, couldn't we?

We could maybe split one of these rocks open,

-see if there's anything inside.

-Yep.

Splitting rocks can be dangerous

and should only be done by a grown-up.

So this here is some of the shell, here, yeah?

So, this is the coil of the Ammonite.

You can actually see the coil quite nice on that one,

-the spiral.

-Yeah.

We're making notes about what we find.

I'm drawing a picture of my fossil.

These fossils here are Belemnites.

This rock is just a little bit big to carry off the beach,

I think, so what can we do?

Take a picture of it.

Great idea. Here you go. Over to you.

Some fossils are in the ground,

but we can still remember them by taking a photo

and then making a rubbing of this fossil.

OK, so now it's time for the best thing about fossil hunting,

I think it's hot chocolate time. What do you say? BOTH: Yeah!

You can join the Let's Go Club, too.

Grab a grown-up and head to the CBeebies website.

There are songs to sing, things to make and do

and CBeebies radio, too.

Remember, we're the club that never closes.