An actual 6 year-old asked me the question today. I was at a loss.
**Edit**: a lot of interesting answers, food for thought, and ideas on how to explain it to a child. Many thanks to the community!
If I summarize:
* Dinosaurs lived for a very (very) long time, all over the earth, and there were countless different species of them.
* There were few of our ancestors, from just a few species, and most of their existence was confined to limited geographical areas.
* The conditions for a fossil to form are extremely rare, and they may have been even rarer for our ancestors than they were for dinosaurs.
In: 819
Fossilization takes a specific series of events and most of how a human skeleton would be left aren’t that. Skeletons decompose if they’re on the surface or just buried in dirt.
This is one of the reasons the precise locations of ancient battlefields are disputed. All the skeletons of the slain are *gone,* there’s nothing to look for.
Significant human archeological finds are either those that did fossilize, or ones that were placed beyond normal elements. Tombs, volcanic ash, that sort of thing.
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