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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 value that tells you whether s fossil is younger or older?
Scientists use a method called Carbon Dating to find out the age of a fossil.
Describe the process by which most fossils form?
1. An ancient animal dies and sinks to the bottom of a river
2. Layers of sediments cover the animal's body
3.Over millions of years, the sediment harden to become rock. The animal is preserved as a fossil.
4. The rock erodes. The fossil is exposed on the surface of a rock.
Why haven't scientists found any remains of dragons?
Dragons are mythical creatures that do not actually exist in reality, so scientists have not found any remains of them. The stories of dragons are part of folklore and mythology, not based on actual evidence or scientific findings.
What kind of rock layers did index fossil date?
index fossils are used to date the rock layers they are found incc
What is similar about mold and cast fossils and petrified wood?
Both copy the shape of its ancient organisms.a MOLD is a hollow area in sediment in the shape of an organism or part of an organism.a mold forms when the hars part of the organism,such as a shell,is buried in sediment.Later, water carrys dissolved minerals and sediment there,the result is a cast.
A CAST is a solid copy of the shapes of organisms.a cats is the opposite of a mold.both mold and cast preserved details of the animals structure
Where La Brea tar pits located?
The La Brea Tar Pits (or Rancho La Brea Tar Pits) are a cluster of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed, in the urban heart of Los Angeles. Asphaltum or tar (brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. The tar is often covered with water. Over many centuries, animals that came to drink the water fell in, sank in the tar, and were preserved as bones. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. The La Brea Tar Pits are now a registered National Natural Landmark.
Did mammals appear in the fossil record before dinosaurs or after?
Mammals actually first came into existence about 220 million years ago, which is about 155 million years before the dinosaurs went extinct, and only about 10 million years after they themselves first evolved. So mammals actually lived alongside the dinosaurs, though played a much smaller role.
Can carbon 14 be used in dating organic substances from precambrian time?
no. 50,000 years is the upper limit for using it for dating.
True or false Fossils are weapons tools and other things made by humans?
Fossils are Animal bones that were preserved for a long period of time.
What you are thinking about is artifacts.
Schists are formed when a sedimentary rock is deformed by great heat and pressure, deep within the Earth's crust. This deformation means that fossils do not survive in schists. Only less deformed rocks, such as slate and shale, can hold fossils.
Why do only some parts of the ammonite get fossilised?
only the shell is left because the rest decomposes
Why do scientist study fossils?
Fossils are used by scientists to determine the where, what, why, when, and how of ancient organisms. Answering these questions will help in determining the environment and climate in which the organisms existed, adaptations made by the organisms to the environment and climate, type and amount of energy requirements of organisms, feeding habits, reproduction techniques, nesting habits, digestion methods, type of respiration, method of locomotion, hunting techniques, timing and cause of extinction events, and the progression of evolution. Fossils are also key indicators of possible fossil fuel deposits which are of great interest to humanity.
The study of fossils also leads to discoveries and understanding of Earth's processes which can benefit mankind. Study of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event eventually led to the hypothesis that a large asteroid impacted Earth. Some astronomers are currently seeking out and cataloging possible impact asteroids in an attempt to predict such a future cataclysm and help in preventing it.
Why does it take million of years for fossils to form?
They're preserved due to the fact that they're inside the ground protected by a barrier of sediment.
Which substances are produced when fossil fuels are burned?
Yes, Fossil fuels are oxidized through the application of heat, which acts as a catalyst(increases the rate of reaction) to the exothermic chemical reaction known as combustion. When a fossil fuel is placed in a heated environment, its molecules are excited to the point that they burn, which is the severing of the electrical bonds between the hydrogen and carbon atoms. The hydrocarbon reacts with the oxygen in the air during combustion, forming water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). If not enough heat is applied to the combustion, then the result is a lot of free carbon molecules in the form of soot. High-heat environments provide ample energy to allow the breaking of hydrocarbons into water and carbon dioxide in larger amounts.
What degrees do you need to be a fossilise?
pretty much you only need a strong background on both sciences ( biology, and geology) aslo you need a 4 year undergraduate programme followed by a M.S degree
Oh yes no trouble at all 8-)
What is the relative age of fossils found at the top layer of rock?
They are called index fossils, fossils of organisms that were widespread, evolving quickly, and only appeared in the geologic column for a specific length of time.
What is the Significance of Glossopteris?
it shows that Pangaea existed. "Wegener inferred that these reptiles lived on a single landmass that has since split apart."
Answer: The late evolutionary professor of Palaeontology Stephen Jay Gould, proposed an evolutionary theory called 'punctuated equilibrium' to explain the evidence he found in the fossil record. His theory essentially meant that evolution proceeded by 'jumps' rather than gradually as Darwin proposed.
The evidence was the fact (still the case today), that the many intermediate forms that are required by evolution to proceed in the standard Darwinian manner just do not exist. Gould once stated that 'The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches … in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and "fully formed." (Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution's erratic pace, Natural History 86(5):14, May 1977.)
The idea was that these 'jumps' occurred in small isolated populations which were thus not as likely to be fossilised. Thus Gould together with Niles Eldredge, explained the large, seemingly unbridgeable gaps in the fossil record, the study of which he was an expert.What is earths oldest form of life?
Single cell organisms date back to approximately 3.5-3.8 billion years old. These are bacteria and archaea.
How do fossil records provide evidence of evolution?
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.
It shows how organisms change over time.
Correct, yes. For example, the earliest vertebrates are jawless fishes, followed by fish with jaws. The earliest terrestrial vertebrates bear uncanny resemblance to sarcopterygian lungfish. The earliest fossils of reptiles bear remarkable resemblance to those earlier amphibians. The earliest birds share numerous reptilian features of therapsid dinosaurs.
This is just vertebrate evolution--we can trace similar stories of change in botanical fossil records, and the fossil record for various invertebrates.
Fossils indicate evolution occurred as they detail variations in bone structures of related animal species, and in plant forms and structures. Radioisotope dates of rock strata demonstrate how plants and animals changed over time. Fossils also reveal how the climate of an area in which the animal or plant lived in changed over of time and how the animal or plant adapted to its environment.
Fossils are remains or impressions of ancient creatures, some of which represent lineages now extinct, and others from which existing species evolved.
Well, do the skeletons of animals today look the same as those found as fossils? The differences between today's living organisms and those that lived thousands of years ago are the very idea of evolution: that life is constantly changing.
fossils are the cool thing about the evidence, as years go by a rock like build up happens and when this works into place you can see the years by the rock that is present around the fossils. when you see what rocks or how far you have dug the rocks will show you what the years it was in.
