Mississippi Science ZOO.8.7
The Standard
- ZOO.8
- Students will understand the structure and function of phylum Chordata, classes Amphibia and Reptilia, and how they demonstrate the characteristics of living things.
Compare and contrast living and extinct reptiles.
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Phylum Chordata, Classes Amphibia, and Reptilia
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students compare living reptiles with extinct reptiles using visible body features. They use observations of living animals and fossil evidence to describe similarities and differences in diet and movement.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can point out the backbones and four limbs in a crocodile and a Triceratops skeleton. They can use each animal's jaw shape to explain a likely difference in diet, while noting that a fossil does not show an animal eating.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think every extinct reptile was a dinosaur, or that all dinosaurs looked like today's lizards. They may treat a guess about an extinct animal's behavior as something a fossil shows directly.
How to Assess It
- Show a crocodile skull photo and a Triceratops skull diagram. Ask students to name one shared feature, one jaw difference, and what that difference suggests about diet.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs printed crocodile and Triceratops skeleton diagrams; have them mark shared bones in blue and different jaw shapes in red.
Ask students to write: What can a Triceratops fossil jaw tell us about diet, and what can we learn by watching a crocodile eat?
Have teams sort crocodile, turtle, Triceratops, and ichthyosaur picture cards into living and extinct groups, then compare one feature across groups.
Use a zoo crocodile photo and a museum Triceratops skeleton photo to make a visitor sign separating observations from inferences.
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Printable ZOO.8.7 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- L.K.4.2
Observe and report how some present-day animals resemble extinct animals (i.e., elephants resemble woolly mammoths).
- L.4.2.1
Compare and contrast life cycles of familiar plants and animals.
- L.2.1.3
Compare and contrast physical characteristics that distinguish between classes of vertebrates (i.e., reptiles compared to amphibians).
- ZOO.8.3
Describe adaptations that have led to reptiles living on land successfully.
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