Explore the extraordinary world of fossils! Find out how they're formed, where to find them and how to identify them in this information book. Written by palaeontology expert Dr Andrew Ross, in conjunction with the National Museum of Scotland, this book will help children discover all the fascinating details of different species for themselves.

This is a Band 10/White book in the Collins Big Cat reading programme which has more complex sentences and figurative language. This is an information book and has an illustrated archaeological dig of the fossils mentioned in the book on pages 30 and 31, which helps children to recap what they've learnt and provides a wealth of speaking and listening opportunities. This book supports learning about geography near the seaside, as well as sparking discussions about history and what it was like to live in the past. This book has been quizzed for Accelerated Reader. For another story in this Collins Big Cat book band for guided reading, try Cinderella (9780007336180) written by David Wood and illustrated by Shahab Shamshirsaz.

This book features in the following series: Collins Big Cat, White Series .

This book is aimed at children in primary school. This book is part of a reading scheme, meaning that it is a book aimed at children who are learning to read. This reading scheme has multiple levels. This reading book uses the phonics method. This approach concentrates on teaching children how to map between sounds and spellings, allowing them to decode written words into their constituent sounds. Phonics skill thus involves being able to split the written word 'cat' into the phonemes /k/, /a/, /t/, and to map from letter 'c' to phoneme /k/, from letter 'a' to phoneme /ae/ and from letter 't' to phoneme /t/. Decoding skill is useful when reading unfamiliar words which use regular spelling sequences.

There are 32 pages in this book. This book was published 2010 by HarperCollins Publishers .

Dr Andrew Ross is the Principal Curator of Palaeobiology of National Museums Scotland, based in Edinburgh. An avid collector of fossils from the age of five, Dr Ross has since become an expert on fossil insects. Prior to moving to Scotland he worked as a curator at the Natural History Museum in London for 15 years. He is the author of many scientific papers and the popular book Amber, the Natural Time Capsule. Collins UK has been publishing educational and informative books for almost 200 years.