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Fossils

Fossils

A fossil is an organism that once was alive but now is preserved in another mineral or chemical form. The name comes from the Latin word 'fossus.'

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  1. What did Darwin learn from the fossils that he observed on his voyage?

    Darwin had found fossil shells at an elevation of 12,000 feet...

  2. What is the oldest fossil recorded by archeologists?

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    In the summer of 1858, William Parker Foulke discovered the f...

  1. What did Darwin learn from the fossils that he observed on his voyage?

    Darwin had found fossil shells at an elevation of 12,000 feet...

  2. What did scientists call dinosaur fossils prior to 1824?

    The word fossil was coined by Georgius Agricola in the 16th c...

  3. What is the oldest Prokaryote fossil in the world?

    The oldest accepted prokaryote fossils date to 3.5 billion ye...

  4. Why are dinosaur fossils only found in usa?

    That is not true, there have been dinosaur fossils found all ...

  5. What is the oldest fossil recorded by archeologists?

    Among the oldest fossils currently known is a bacteria, the c...

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  1. What do fossils tell us about the earth?

    Fossils provide an insight into the organisms, plants and ani...

  2. What did Darwin learn from the fossils that he observed on his voyage?

    Darwin had found fossil shells at an elevation of 12,000 feet...

  3. Where were the oldest fossils found?

    Dated to be at least 560 million years old, the oldest verteb...

  4. Why are dinosaur fossils only found in usa?

    That is not true, there have been dinosaur fossils found all ...

  5. Who was one of the first scientists to study fossils?

    Part of a bone, now known to have been the femur of a Megalos...

About Fossils

Fossils are remains that are preserved from past life on earth. The word fossil comes from the Latin word fossus, which means something dug up. Many fossils are from extinct groups. They might be from a small group such as a species, or from a much larger group such as a family, super family, class or phylum. Trilobites are an example of a large extinct group.

Extinction of an organism is not a prerequisite for a preserved organism to be considered a fossil, and in many cases whether a species is extinct may not even be determinable. Fossils are considered to be the actual remains of an organism after it has undergone one or more of a multitude of possible chemical and mineral transformations. Such fossils are more commonly called body fossils and for the most part, they are rocks with a fossil resin. Amber is an exception to this rule because it is a fossilized tree resin.

Ichnofossils fossils are another important category of fossils that incorporates marks, impressions, footprints, and even the excrement left by an organism. Ichnofossils are also variously called trace fossils and trackway fossils.
A final fossil category is molecular fossils (also called chemical fossils) that consist of altered chemical/atomic constituency of a matrix (a rock for example) due to past life.

The oldest known fossils are usually considered to be stromatolites and are usually described as layered structures formed by the entrapment of minerals in mucous generated by cyanobacterial colonies. However, this may be an oversimplification in that there is no reason to think that the photosynthetic cyanobacteria were solely responsible for the many surviving formations of biogenically-produced stromatolitic structures.

As a general rule, the probability of a deceased organism undergoing fossilization and being preserved is a rare event because it will only occur during certain circumstances and those circumstances are unlikely. However, it must also be said that fossils are not rare, since the earth is filled with them. What makes fossils so rare is because they are hard to find.

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