The mysteries of ancient creatures can be brought out into the light through the fossils we dig up – or otherwise stumble across!
There is something quite primal about that connection through to beings that have long since disappeared from the face of the Earth.
So our writing topic for today is fossils, and I thought we’d mix it up and do some creative writing inspired by a whole range of story prompts.
I want to help a vivid story spring to life, help capture the amazement of someone finding a fossil, and explore where that might go from there…
How to use the prompts:
Try picking out a random topic, and write for 20 minutes on it. Get down everything you can on the subject of your prompt.
Combine two writing prompts at random, for an extra interesting plot twist to be incorporated into your story of wonder.
You can try combining creative writing and drawing. Write in-depth about a specific prompt, and draw a small accompanying illustration.
You might have a totally different idea on how these prompts can inspire writing, please let us know how you’ve used them – it’s always wonderful to hear from our creative community!
15 Writing Prompts about Fossils:
- While hiking in a canyon a sharp rock sticking out of a bank catches your eye. You get closer, and brushing it off you discover…
- You push past the small trees branches in the dusty outcrop, trip and fall into wide hole in the ground, a few feet deep. You dust yourself off and then realize… you’re standing inside a huge footprint, and in front of you lies a fossilized talon…
- Finally after many days you made it to the top of the mountain! You sit exhausted on a rock, and notice with confusion that all around you the rocks are in the shape of giant sea snails…
- The cave is pitch black, your torch light cutting a beam into the darkness. Suddenly the torch lights up a row of giant gleaming white razor sharp teeth. A dinosaurs fossilized skull looms over the cave…
- Your dog barking excitedly is scrabbling at the ground. He wrestles with something, and then comes running over to you with something in his jaws, something encased in golden amber…
- You send up the drone higher and higher over the remote valley you’ve travelled to. Watching through its camera you suddenly see the unmistakeable shape of an enormous creature become stone lying where it fell millions of years ago…
- As you run your fingers through the warm sand of the beach with the suns heat on your back, you feel something jagged. You lift out of the sand a creature that seems to be encased in stone…
- How did this fossil get here, and how has it remained undisturbed for so many hundreds of millions of years?
- The fossilized skeletons of two mighty creatures that once roamed the earth lay before her…
- The scientist was trying to extract DNA from the extinct creatures fossilized remains, to try and bring it back into existence millions of years later…
- It was a smooth fossil which the explorer carried in his jacket pocket, everywhere he went…
- It’s been found that even our own ancient ancestors from hundreds of thousands of years ago used fossils as part of their stone tools…
- He had discovered a fossil – the skull of a big cat, which was over 6 million years old!
- The creature was fully encased in amber, preserving its DNA – the blueprint of its lifeform.
- A mining company digging a new quarry discover a never before seen group of mammoth, who have become fossils after becoming trapped in a tar pit.
Need more writing prompts?
Have you written about the rain recently? Or how about writing about being brave?
We’ve got thousands of free prompts, writing topics and other resources for young and aspiring writers. And that’s certainly not all! Check out our visual writing prompts and all of our other awesome printable PDFs.
Please share this with someone you think might find it useful! It takes a few seconds, and helps out more than you know!
Thanks,
Matt & Hayley
