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.

* White/Band 10 books have more complex sentences and figurative language.

* Text type: An information book.

* An illustrated archaeological dig of the fossils mentioned in the book on pages 30 and 31 helps children to recap what they've learnt and provides a wealth of speaking and listening opportunities.

* Curriculum links: Geography: Going to the seaside; History: What was it like to live here in the past?

This book is part of a book series called Collins Big Cat .

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 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 2012 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.