What three things can scientists tell from a fossil?
- Structure. The most basic information a fossil can provide is about what animals and plants looked like. …
- Environment. The condition of a fossil can indicate what type of environment existed at the time. …
- Dating. …
- Geology. …
- Evolution.
How do fossils help us understand the Earth?
Fossils don’t just show how living things have changed; they can also help us understand how the Earth has changed. Over millions of years the Earth’s surface shifts and changes. For example, rocks that once formed the seafloor might be forced up to form a mountain range. This means that you can sometimes find the fossils ...
What is the fossil record?
The fossil record. Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of a dead organism. They provide evidence for how living things and the environment have changed over time. Fossils have been found in rocks of all ages, stretching back billions of years. However, most of the species found in the fossil record have died out or become extinct.
Where are human fossils found?
Sometimes, there are no human fossils, but there may still be other evidence of ancient human presence. At Laetoli in Tanzania, there is a set of hominid footprints preserved in volcanic ash, 3.6m years old. Stone tools found in Happisburgh in Norfolk show that humans must have passed that way more than 800,000 years ago. At Boxgrove near Chichester there is a human shinbone 500,000 years old, but there are also animal bones and flint chippings to show where an axe-maker must have worked.
What will happen to bones over millions of years?
Then, over millions of years, as the sands gather above the burial site, minerals in the bone will leak away, to be replaced by rock crystals that precisely copy the bone's shape. Conditions will change; water, glaciers and wind will erode the terrain.
What do fossils teach us?
Fossils also teach us about the history of Earth. When paleontologists found fossils of the same plants and animals on every continent, they began to suspect that the continents were once pushed together into one giant supercontinent. This turned out to be true.
Why do scientists need to know how old fossils are?
Scientists need to know how old fossils are. This helps them understand how species evolved and how the planet changed over time.
How do fossils form?
Typically, fossils form when a dead organism gets covered in sand, mud, or clay. Over time, minerals from the soil surrounding a dead animal slowly replace parts of the animal. This usually only happens for the hardest parts of an animal, such as its bones.
How to find out how old a rock is?
Radioactive elements slowly break down into other, more stable elements over time, in a very consistent manner. By measuring amounts of radioactive material in a sample, scientists can figure out exactly how old a rock or fossil is.
What is a fossil?
A fossil is a record of a plant or animal that lived thousands or even millions of years ago. Some fossils are very big, like dinosaur bones. Others are so tiny you need a microscope to see them. The scientists who dig for fossils and study them are called paleontologists.
Can everything become a fossil?
Not everything becomes a fossil. Some plants and animals decay completely before their bones can become fossilized. Some fossils are so broken that it’s hard to read their story. In fact, most fossils are only tiny fragments of the organisms they once belonged to.
Do whales have fossils?
Still, there are gaps in the fossil record. For instance, we still don’t know exactly how whales evolved. We have found fossils of many of their relatives, including some ancient animals that looked like hippos with webbed feet. However, since whales evolved in the ocean, few of their fossil remains are available to study.
What makes a good fossil?
When faced with a jacket, preparators must meet each fossil where it is. The attributes of what makes a “good” fossil vary widely based on the priorities and values of individual preparators and scientists. Every fossil bears the physical and chemical marks of its unique journey from a living bone to a fossilized one. How animals die, become encased in sediment, are mineralized, and get compacted by surrounding rock layers shapes what that specimen is, including which body parts are preserved, in what condition, and how distorted they are from their shape in life.
What does it mean to clean fossils?
Scientists say that preparators “clean” fossils—a somewhat dismissive portrayal of the work. “Cleaning” implies preexisting evidence merely waiting to be revealed. The work therefore sounds “clean” in the sense that it seems free from values, theories, and individuals’ biases, as well as simple and straightforward. In the scientists’ view, preparators’ actions only respond to reality.
How do fossil preparators work?
There is no specific training or certification required to work as a preparator; preparators teach novices on the job through informal supervision and advice . They draw on skills from their diverse backgrounds to free fossils from rock and piece them together . Keith, for example, is a veteran and retired businessman. He credits his home improvement projects and his love of puzzles and baking for honing his attention to detail, problem-solving skills, and fine motor dexterity, which he relies on to prepare fossils. During my study of Keith’s lab, I often saw him—like many preparators—improvise tools and techniques, such as bending a wire to serve as a screwdriver and filling a specimen tray with sand to hold fossils steady while he glued them. Many professional as well as volunteer preparators credit their training in art or carpentry or their hobbies in crafting or model-making for their preparation skills. The many possible paths to becoming a fossil preparator demonstrate the importance of hands-on learning and highlight the fact that skills acquired outside traditional schooling can also be crucial for scientific inquiry.
What do fossil preppers do?
Preparators do significant physical and epistemic processing to make fossils researchable, although their contributions to the forms that specimens take are rarely reported in institutional records or museum exhibits—and even less often in published papers.
What can other sciences learn from these volunteer preparators?
What could other sciences learn from these volunteer preparators? To start, scientists, including paleontologists, could begin to include all contributors in publications and exhibits— if not as authors, then at least in the description of the research methods or as part of the acknowledgements. Another idea is that universities and other research centers could follow museums’ lead by hosting glass-walled labs, volunteer programs, and other outreach efforts where people can meet research workers and perhaps get involved in scientific work. Members of the public may better understand and trust scientific knowledge if they know how it was produced, and by whom. For example, the movement for open science, which promotes open-access datasets and publications, could be expanded to include transparency about data preparation and all the workers who conduct it.
What is the purpose of specimen preparation?
Fundamentally, the purpose of specimen preparation is to satisfy scientists’ desire to access pieces of nature—free of distracting context yet as complete as possible— so they can describe, identify, and compare them. But how are these values defined and carried out, and by whom?
