The rain had finally slowed down. “It’s about time,” Clay Reyna thought. This place was not like sunny California at all. He had lived on this ranch for only a few weeks, but already he didn’t like it. He hadn’t made any friends at school. All it seemed to do here was rain.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Clay was bored. When the rain finally stopped, he decided to go outside and walk around. It had rained so hard for so long. Clay could see that water had washed away a layer of dirt. Rocks that had been covered with dirt now poked out. The top part of the ground had been washed away.

As Clay walked along, he saw a rock with an unusual shape. He carefully dug the rock out of the ground. He had to use both hands to pick it up. It was shaped like a cone. “This looks like a shell or a giant snail,” Clay thought, “except that it’s rock.” Puzzled, he decided to take it to school on Monday. His teacher Miss Shaw could probably tell him more about it.

“Where did you find this?” Miss Shaw asked excitedly when Clay showed her the rock at school. When he told her where he had found it, Miss Shaw’s face lit up. “May I keep this for a day or two?” she asked. “I promise to give it back.” Clay agreed.

That night at home, the phone rang. After a few minutes Clay’s mother came into his room.

“That was Miss Shaw. She wanted to know whether we would let her bring your class to our ranch on Friday,” Clay’s mother said.

“Really?” Clay asked, a little excited. It would be neat to have a field trip at his house.

“Miss Shaw said she took your rock to the college in town. She found out that the rock is really a fossil of a shell. She wants your class to look for more fossils. I told her we would love to have your class here,” Clay’s mother said.

The next day at school, Miss Shaw announced to the class, “I’m going to change our science lessons for this week. We’re going on a fossil hunt. Clay’s parents are going to let us look around their ranch. We’re going to look for fossils like the one Clay found. I asked the principal, and she has approved our field trip for this Friday. But before we go, I want all of you to learn more about fossils.”

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Clay and his classmates studied fossils. They learned that fossils are signs of life from long ago. Fossils can be a deep print of a leaf, branch, or an animal’s foot in a rock. Fossils can also be bones or shells that have turned into rock over the years. By studying fossils, people can learn about the plants and animals that once lived on Earth. They also can learn about the changes that have occurred in weather, water, and land. These changes have taken place over many years.

Finally it was Friday morning. Clay’s class, Miss Shaw, and several parents rode a school bus to the Reynas’ ranch. Miss Shaw picked up a stone as soon as she got off the bus. “This might have been a clam once,” she said, holding up a fat heart-shaped rock.

Several students gathered around her to look at the rock. Knowing what to look for, they found three more just like it. All the students started talking and walking around together. After about an hour of searching, Clay found a piece of flat, smooth stone with what looked like a leaf printed on it. One of the other students found a gray stone with the perfect fan shape of a seashell on it.

Miss Shaw finally announced it was time to go. Disappointed, the students got back onto the bus. A few students approached Clay when they arrived back at school.

“Do you think it would be O.K. if we came back to your ranch tomorrow?” one of the girls from Clay’s class asked. “We could look for more fossils.”

Clay thought that it would be great. He nodded his head thoughtfully. Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all.