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By using relative age. Over a long period of time, sediment will, layer by layer, coat and cover the fossil, making it difficult for paleontologists and scientists to figure out how old the fossil really is.
gene similarities, physical structures, and fossil record.
Scientists use the fossil record and structural and molecular comparisons to construct phylogenetic trees. This answer came straight from my freshman Biology book.
You should handle a fossil with care because they are very old and delicate.
The fossil record provides evidence about the history of life and past environment on earth. The fossil record also shows that different groups of organism have changed over time.
dont really know xx ;)
== NO a fossil must be found but scientists can probably guess about how old the mountain is by looking at it and fing== ding out the types of rock that it has. ===
Scientists can use carbon dating to determine the age of a fossil.
Fossil Succession
The principle of fossil succession and the theory of evolution have helped scientists explain the fossil record.
Radiometric is the type of dating used to determine how old a fossil is.
There are layers of earth that are deposited over time and based on where a fossil is in the layers a scientist can understand what the age of the fossil is relevant to another fossil in a different layer of earth. The law of superposition says that new sediment is deposited on top of old sediment so, the sediment in the bottom layer is the oldest and the sediment at the top is the youngest. Because of this the fossils in the bottom layer are the oldest and the fossils near the top are the youngest. Say you have 10 layers of rock, and the top layer is number 1 (the youngest) and the bottom layer is number 10 (the oldest). Even if a scientist can't tell exactly how old a fossil is if they know it is in a layer deeper than another fossil they know it is older than that fossil so, a fossil from layer 9 is older than a fossil from layer 5 which is also older than a fossil from layer 3. This is relative age. If we take it a step further... If a scientist knows that the fossil in layer 4 is 65 million years old than we not only know the fossils in layer 5-10 are older than the one in layer 4, but that they are all older than 65 million years old. So, the fossils in layer 1-3 would be less than 65 million years old. Scientists can know how old a specific fossil is sometimes based on whether or not it is an index fossil (a fossil that only occurred during a very small, specific interval of time), or if it is possible to carbon date it or something in the same layer.
I don't know, but scientist know.
Because if you know how old the fossil is, and you find the fossil inside a rock, you know that rock has a maxium age corresponding with the age of the fossil.
No
no one will ever know.
how might a fossil affect the work of scientists