Trilobite eyes are really cool, and I really like them. I've made a film all about trilobites, and you can watch it if you want, and I hope you like it!

We know this is not a fossil, but it was another type of dig. When Mummy was out walking, she dug the ground to see if she could find anything old. And she found a bottle! We took the shards home, we cleaned them super-carefully, and then we puzzled it back together. That's what palaeontologists do when they find a dinosaur skeleton, so it was good practice. The bottle is about 100 years old!!
(Clarification from Mummy: the bottle was half out of the ground!)

This is what it looked like when we finished it:

Today, we did an archaeological dig. It might not look like it's for fossils, but it is what palaeontologists sometimes do. Usually, you dig for something that's already there, but we buried things, and then, in 8 weeks, we're going to dig them out and see if they've changed. We buried six things - three of them were organic, and three of them were inorganic. Organic means they were alive, and inorganic means they weren't alive. Our organic things were a banana skin, a hyacinth leaf and a piece of paper (paper is organic, because it's made from trees). Our inorganic things were a fossil, a lego brick and a coin. The fossil was once alive, but now it is stone, so it's inorganic.

For each one we had to say what colour it was, draw a picture, measure it, and say what it felt like. And when we dig them up, some of them might have changed, and some of them might have not changed.

Then we went outside. We put sand in a plastic box, and we made one layer, and we put two things on it. And then we made the next layer, and then we put two things on, and then we made a layer of soil, and we put two things on it, and we put more soil on top.

Now it's finished. It's going to stay in our garden for eight weeks, and then we'll tell you if anything's changed. If you want to make your own archaeological dig, you can use the information that we used: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/history/handsonhistory/dig_family.pdf 

I went to Weston Park Museum today. A few years ago, I went to it with my pre-school, but I didn't know as much about fossils then. In this picture, I'm drawing where I can see something hiding in the ground. Archaeologists do that, and palaeontologists do it, too - and I want to be a palaeontologist. An archaeologist might draw shards and things, and a palaeontologist might draw fossils and bones, but an archaeologist might draw bones, too - but they won't be fossilised.

This tree grew in Sheffield. It was 310 million years ago. Back then, it looked like a big swamp - it might have had lots of creatures. I would love to find one of those trees!

There's a plesiosaur and an ichthyosaur. The plesiosaur is the bottom one, it has a long neck. The ichthyosaur is the one on top, it's a bit squished.

My best bit was when we saw the plesiosaur, because we didn't know it was there, and with pre-school we didn't look at it.

We went fossil hunting in Port Mulgrave. We left really early in the morning, and Mummy bought some croissants to eat on the beach. It was breakfast! We found lots of fossils that we didn't take, because they were in a too-big rock. Here are some pictures.

But we did take this big, big, big one, because it was good! I held it to carry it up the hill, but Daddy carried it a lot, too. If you swipe (edit from Mummy: scroll) below, you will see the big fossils that I'm carrying in this picture.

This plant is mine, because I found it. Daddy found the fern, and Mummy found the one in the last picture. We were really happy, because we haven't found lots of plants. The lego brick is to show you how big the fossil is.

This is jet. Jet is monkey-puzzle tree that is fossilised. In Whitby, we went to an old jet carving workshop. We saw a bench and wheels to grind and smooth the jet, and one of the wheels was made of walrus leather.

This ammonite is special, because we never found one like this. Can you see the squiggly lines? We made them big in that picture below.

Daddy found this rock with lots of shells in. And he also found the shell below. Although that might be a big piece of ammonite - we don't know. It's pyrite, that's why it looks gold. Or maybe, if you look at it, it might look silver, but that's just the photo.

This is me with an ichthyosaur, but it's already fossilised. It's in a museum in York (edit from Mummy: Yorkshire Museum). It was super-big. The eye was as big as my head! There were lots of other fossils, too, like fossilised fish, fossilised footprints and some of the fossils that we found already. My best bit about the trip was seeing the ichthyosaur and walking on glass at the museum - they had a glass floor with real dinosaur footprints underneath. We're going to go back, because our ticket is good for a whole year!

Today I made an ancient rockpool! We went to Castleton and we met Gordon, and he helped me make my rockpool. First I painted it blue and green. Then I stuck down rocks while Mummy made some tubes for the corals. Gordon drew me my two trilobites, and I drew an ammonite and a fish. I stuck some wool in the corals and I put a silver piece in. My rockpool is my best creation ever!

Gordon made me two trilobite puppets. There was a big one and a small one. My best one was the big one, it was three-fingered. 

There were ammonite toys and belemnite toys, and there were even real fossils there!

If you want to, then you can read about the project: http://ancientlandscapes.blogspot.co.uk/ 

I had a really, really good time!