What do you mean by fossils?
Answers
Explanation:
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as decomposition of buried dead plants and animals. Amongst the three major types of rock, fossils are most commonly found in sedimentary rock.
Answer:
Fossils are the geologically altered remains of a once-living organism and/or its behaviour. ... Fossils are of particular interest to geologists as they can help determine the age of a particular rock compared to other rocks, or identify the environment in which the rock was formed.
Explanation:
Fossils are the geologically altered remains of a once-living organism and/or its behaviour. There are two main types: body fossils represent all or part of the organism’s body, and trace fossils show evidence of the organism’s behaviour. The study of fossils is called paleontology, from the Greek meaning ‘ancient (paleo-) being (onto-) study (-logy)’. Scientists who study fossils are called paleontologists. Fossils are of particular interest to geologists as they can help determine the age of a particular rock compared to other rocks, or identify the environment in which the rock was formed.
What can become fossil?
Any living thing — animal, plant, bacterium or fungus — has the potential to become a fossil, but because the process of fossilisation is destructive not everything that dies is preserved. Most dead organisms are eaten, rot away or are destroyed by the environment before they have the chance to become fossils.
Some animal or plant parts preserve more readily than others. For example, bones fossilise better than flesh and organs, because fewer predators and scavengers eat bones, and they are more resistant to physical and chemical destruction. Organisms like jellyfish with no hard parts like bones or shells are rare in the fossil record because they are less likely to be preserved.
Normally, only the toughest parts of the toughest animals and plants become fossils. But occasionally the environment is just right to preserve complete soft-bodied organisms that are rarely fossilised, or an entire ecosystem. These special locations are commonly called lagerstätten, a German word meaning ‘storage place’. These sites are important to scientists as they can tell us a lot about how the animals lived and died, and how the different types of organisms interacted with one another and the environment. Special environmental conditions are generally required to form one of these sites — either the animals were quickly killed and buried through anaerobia (lack of oxygen) or volcanic ash, or the water chemistry was particularly good at preserving the bodies.
Western Australia’s Gogo Formation in the west Kimberley is considered a lagerstätten by scientists as a number of beautifully preserved fish (some including evidence of live birth) have been found — including Western Australia’s State fossil.
Body fossils, like the ammonite (A) and plant fossil (B), seen in the image above, are the remains of the organism’s ‘body’, whereas trace fossils, like the worm burrows (C) and arthropod trackways (D), preserve evidence of an organism’s behaviour, such as eating, walking or living.
How can behaviour be preserved?
Sometimes, organisms leave behind indications of their behaviour such as tracks or burrows, without leaving behind parts of their bodies. These fossilised behaviours are known as trace fossils. Trace fossils can include animal footprints, bite marks, coprolites (fossil dung), or a preserved nest or burrow. They might tell us about how an organism moved, where and how it lived, what it ate, and how it hunted and socialised.
It is often hard to tell what organism made a trace, unless a body fossil is found close by, and sometimes trace makers can be deduced by comparing them to modern organisms. Even if the culprits cannot be found, trace fossils still reveal much about how organisms lived and their environment. For example, tracks preserving fine details suggest they were made on a damp but exposed surface, whereas tracks with a washed out look may be formed underwater, or were washed out almost immediately.
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