Why are many fossils often incomplete?

Answer 1

Not all organisms became fossils. In fact, for an animal or plant to fossilize is a rare occurrence.

Most fossils are found in sedimentary rocks which formed at the bottom of seas or oceans, but no present oceanic crust is more than 200 million years old.

Only relatively small areas of oceanic sedimentary rock were preserved on land due to the actions of plate tectonics, the rest were part of shallow continental seas, drowned areas of land similar to the South China Sea or North Sea today.

Nowhere on Earth has a complete, unbroken sequence of rocks from earliest times as our planet is constantly moving, new oceans being born and mountain ranges being formed. So you cannot have an unbroken record of fossils from the beginning of life, although more new finds are being discovered every year.

Answer 2

1. Fossils show that life did not always have the forms that it has now. It shows that significantly different lifeforms existed in the past, and now no longer exist.

2. Fossils show that life in the past has progressed in a series of forms that each seem remarkably similar to both earlier and later forms, indicating that heredity is a factor in their emergence.

3. Fossils show that the life that existed in the past adhered to the same set of nested hierarchies as life today, and that, as time progresses, the forms in these hierarchies of fossils approach the forms in extant life.

These three observations confirm the existence of evolution in general and common descent in particular.

Answer 3

There are missing links. However, the fossil record supplies fantastic evidence for the theory of evolution.

Answer 4

it depends on what the fossil is about. like dinosaurs : they have fossils because of the plants that took shape

Answer 5

Fossils of dinosaurs are often incomplete because parts of the bones may get crushsed or destroyed or seperated from the other bones and just haven't been found yet