Fossils

Wolves have changed some over the past 20 million years, but not by a huge amount. There are fossils of mosquitoes in amber that are remarkably similar to modern mosquitoes, though they are over 200 million years old.

Coelacanth is a variety of fish for which modern specimens are somewhat similar to species that lived at the close of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. So there are a few creatures that have not changed a whole lot over vast stretches.

Horseshoe crabs are yet another example, for which there are specimens over 440 million years old.

The Lucy fossil was found in Hadar, Ethiopia.

The first known vertebrate fossils, found at the Chengjiang locality in China, date back to the early Cambrian. These early vertebrates, such as Haikouichthys, are small, tapered, streamlined animals showing eyes, a brain, pharyngeal arches, a notochord, and rudimentary vertebrae. Vertebrates appear to have radiated in the late Ordovician, about 450 million years ago. However, most Ordovician fossil fossil vertebrates are rare and fragmentary, although available material suggests that ancestors of the sharks and jawed fish were present along with various lineages of armored jawless fish. By the middle Silurian, about 400 million years ago, the picture is clearer: the armored jawless fish were quite diverse, and the first definite jawed fish had appeared -- the Silurian is sometimes called the "Age of Fishes." By the late Devonian, 360 million years ago, early cartilaginous fish and bony fish were diversifying.

.540

Usually by observing them. However, a scientist can make an educated guess on what an animal eats simple by analyzing the anatomy. Clues such as teeth and claws, as well as the digestive organs, indicate whether it was a meat eater, plant eater, or omnivore. These same things can hint at whether an animal specializes in a very specific food source. The area where the animal comes from also gives clues (i.e., if it's a large carnivore from an area where there are deer, then the animal probably eats deer, among other things).

A trace fossil provides evidence that an organism existed. Examples would be fossilized footprints or handprints also dung.

A Fossil watch can be purchased at the official Fossil website, at department stores like Nordstrom, or at more generic retailers such as Amazon. There are also some deals on used Fossil watches from sites like eBay.

The word fossil literally means something dug up from the ground. Preservation as a fossil is a very unusual occurrence; if every dead animal was fossilised we would long ago have been buried by them. Recycling is what ecosystems are all about, that way all the elements and minerals are available for new animals and plants. So how are fossils preserved.

Fossilisation is a very complex process; it can take many different forms and we don't understand everything about it. The thing that has to be ensured for every fossil is that the recycling process is interrupted at some stage - precisely when can vary. The way this is achieved is by burying the remains of the animal. The burial process may be what kills the animal, or at the other extreme may only happen long after the animal is dead and its remains have been broken and scattered.

Mere burial, however does not ensure an animal's fossilisation. Subterranean conditions must also be favourable; the activity of worms or bacterial action can destroy bone and water in the sediment can disintegrate it. Providing the bone survives all this it is still not plain sailing. The sediment in which it is buried could be eroded before the fossil is found or it could be buried so deep or folded so strongly that the rock is metamorphosed and the organic remains destroyed. Even if the Mesozoic sediments in which the fossils are are at or near the surface now it does not mean that the fossil will ever be discovered and excavated.

Insects are most likely to be found in Amber. Because amber is a fossilized gum. The insects are likely to get stuck with gum prior to the process of fossilization of gum into amber.

I don't really know how it works or what it entails, but there's a process called carbon dating that's frequently mentioned to determine the age of various objects. I'm not sure exactly, but it involves determining the half-life of one of the elements in the fossil, and then determining how long ago it started to decay.

Ammonites are the most widely-known and abundant fossils in the world. The name "ammonites" came from the Greek god Ammon. Ammonites include squid, octopus, snails, cuttlefish, and nautilus.

An organism stops taking in carbon when it dies.

Fossilization is a rare thing. It's even more rare when a fossil survives to modern times, and yet rarer for us to actually find one in some identifiable form. So one should not be surprised if we will be unable to illustrate the whole of our evolutionary history using the fossil record.

Fossils tell scientists now different animals and humans existed long ago. They are dated and can tell scientists how a species evolved and died.

The fossil record tells us what types, kinds, and numbers of organisms may have lived in the past, as well as what they ate, what age they lived in, how they moved, where they lived, Their activities, how they breathed, how they reproduced, their appearance, the climate they lived in, how they died, their lifespan, and what led to their evolution and their extinction.

There are rarer fossils, as in fossils that belong to creatures that haven't been discovered yet or are very uncommon, but no "best" fossil.

big question it gonna be wet but is by the rust

The more recent rock layers will contain fossils that are more similar to current species because of evolution. The older the fossils, the more evolutionary changes will exist between them and current species which accounts for the greater differences.

Sedimentary rocks show fossils, because of pre-existing life forms.

They also show ripple marks due to weathering and erosion...

Imprint

Many fossils are actually far older; some going back 5 or 6 times as far in history.

However, trilobites are some of the oldest 'macroscopic fossils' (fossils of bigger things than bacteria and single-celled organisms) simply because they were there in large enough numbers and in the right conditions to be fossilised first too.

Without rapid burial decay will take place and you will not be left with a fossil. In the same way coalification requires rapid burial of organic material. A good example of this is spirit lake in Washington state.

A body fossil would be in the form, or part of, the organism that has fossilized. A trace fossil indicates evidences other than a fossilized body part, that indicates the existence of an organism, such as burrows, trails, eggs, nests, and fecal matter.