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Fossils
This category is for questions about the bones, fragments, imprints, and other remainders from a different time. The questions and answer you will find here are history set in stone -- our past, immortalized in solid rock. You will also be able to find questions pertaining to the locations of these fossils, how you might identify them, and how they were formed.
3,454 Questions
What is the price range for fossil ladies watches?
Fossil wallets are the in-thing. Many individuals love the appeal and the quality of these wallets. The price range for Fossil wallets can be pretty expensive, based on the quality, fabric used (such as leather) and the uniqueness. However, the median price range is $40 to $45.
What is the fact that similar fossils are found on the both sides of the ocean is evidence of?
continental drift
What type of tools does a paleontologist use?
herpetologist use all kinds of tools like cotton balls, knifes, safety pins and more
A footprint left in a river bank is an example of which type of fossil?
A footprint left in a river bank is an example of a cast fossil. Over time, the footprint fills in with sediment and hardens, leaving a casting of the footprint.
Does fossilization need oxygen to occur?
Most organisms we find in the fossil record depend on oxygen to survive, but it is not necessary in the actual process of fossilization. In fact, a lack of oxygen would actually improve an organism's chance of being preserved, as it would hold back decay.
Can radiocarbon dating be used to determine the age of petrified wood?
Carbon 14 would not usually be used to date a piece of petrified wood.
1. The useful date range for C14 is perhaps 20 times the half life - but that is not more than 110 000 years - too short for many petrified woods.
2. Petrified wood as the name implies have been converted into stone - there may well be no carbon left.
3. There are techniques for dating the minerals which replaced the wood, but establishing the actual time-line for the process is rather an uncertain process. Ordinary stratigraphy would likely be a better bet. But if there are companion material, such as pollen grains, these might offer an approach.
What do scientists use to data the exact age of fossils?
A technique called Radiocarbon dating was (and still is) used. In organic material, such as plants and animals, the amount of a naturally occurring isotope of Carbon, C-14, can be measured. C-14 is gradually depleted in the atmosphere, so the more C-14 is present, the older the fossil is.
The amount of C-14 in the atmosphere can be fairly accurately calculated up to 62,000 years ago. When the concentration of C-14 in the fossil is measured, scientists compare it with calculated data from the past, and they make an estimation of a fossils age.
An exact age cannot be determined, but this is the most accurate estimation we can produce.
Fossil organisms succeed one another in a definite and determinable order, and therefore any time period can be recognized by its fossil content.
-organisms evolve, and organisms become extinct.
Proposed by William Smith late 1700's and early 1800's
Are trilobites common fossils?
Yes, they normally are fairly common. Except, It is not so common to find complete ones.
How is the use of radioactive decay in absolute dating similar to how you use a clock?
The ticking of a clock is constant, occurring at a steady rhythm/frequency.
While the decay of radioactive elements cannot be determined at a particular point in time, they do decay at a fairly steady rate over time. This allows you to statistically determine the rate at which a mass of radioactive material will steadily decay. So, the decay rate is steady, predictable, and follows a sort of rhythm over time just like the ticking of a clock.
well they're dead so they lived in rocks and swaps and beaches and then they died they fell to the sea floor and the bones were covered by sand sand eventually they turned into fossils. which ill look like regular rocks. This proccess takes millions of years.
What is the difference between petrifaction and permineralization?
Permineralization is the process of fossilization where mainly water mineral deposits take the form of the organism. The minerals harden with time and pressure from over laying deposits turning into rock.
Petrification happens when silica binds with celulose of a plant and turns into stone often retaining the microstructure of the plant.
What kind of fossils are found in South America and South Africa?
it was the Cynognathus. Cynognathus is an extinct mammal-like reptile. The name literally means 'dog jaw'. Cynognathus was as large as a modern wolf and lived during the early to mid Triassic period (250 to 240 million years ago). It is found as fossils only in South Africa and South America.
Why are animal fossils more abundant from the Cambrian Period than from the earlier periods?
Because Paleozoic era rock is much older than Mesozoic era rock, these strata are generally at greater depth than Mesozoic rock, thus limiting their accessibility to areas that have been exposed by weathering and erosion.
Why teeth are the most abundant fossil of hominid?
It is living matter that has become mineralized (fossilized).
Explain how scientist use fossils to support the theory of evolution?
It's a fine bit of circular reasoning that requires that fossils found fit into the pre-decided place on the evolutionary chart. They then point to the fossil record as proof of the theory. There are many gaps and instances of "parallel evolution". For example, the focusing eye had to develop at least four separate times, for the evolutionary theory.
Answer:
Fossils are like the clues the police use to solve a crime.
Each one tells a story. Like clues to a crime, where the police don't have to find a print of every footstep taken by a subject or confirm every thing that he did, the clues paint a logical outline of all the events around the crime.
Like clues in a crime the police do not initially identify a person they want to pin the crime on and then seek to tie him to the event - they find a number of clues which identify potential subjects of interest. They then attempt to prove the relation of these suspects to the crime until the trail of evidence is strong and dependable. Usually multiple facts on the same evidence are considered - for a crime it might be fingerprints and video tape and eye witnesses, for fossils it could be carbon 14 and dendronchronology and geologic strata.
Is amber a fossil if there is an insect in it?
yes. it depends on the temperature of the amber. yes. it depends on the temperature of the amber.
In what type of rock do you find a fossil?
The vast majority of fossils are found in sedimentary rock. Igneous rock forms from magma; no chance for fossils to form there. Metamorphic rocks are other rock types that are changed by heat and pressure; their transformation and mineral reorganization causes very few fossils to be found there. Sedimentary rock can be formed from the accumulation of sediments and are often formed near ancient shores, basins, and lake beds. If an organism dies and is covered by sediments before being rotted or eaten by predatory organisms, it could eventually become part of the sedimentary layer that becomes rock.
Fossil rocks are rocks containing the bones of ancient animals like dinosaurs. Also the shells of clams, snails, sea urchins, corals, plants: in fact the remains, traces or indications of life in the past
The sediments which make up the rocks on the highest mountains were once at the bottom of an ocean, (where the animals lived), and were only pushed up by the action of Plate Tectonics.
What would be the two methods of dating fossils and explain each?
relative and absolute. relative is determining the relative order of past events, without necessarily determining their absolute age. Absolute is the process of determining an approximate computed age in archaeology and geology.
