How Fossils are Made

We know what they are, but how did they get there? There are a number of ways that this happens, as is shown below:

Amber: this way, an insect, or small animal can be embalmed in liquid tree sap, which eventually hardens and turns into a stone-like structure called Amber. This preserves the creature inside, with almost all of it kept the way it was when it got encapsulated.

Bones: Bones that are left behind after an organism dies are naturally preserved in stone.

Petrification: this is still done with bones in mind, but where the bones lose their structure, it is replaced with minerals from the ground that are drawn to the bone structure. It then keeps the bones in a fairly whole condition.

Tar: another way for bones and organisms to be preserved is the use of tar. Compared to something like a peat bog, this is a way to slow the rate of decay an organism might have to preserve it for a long period of time.

There are hundreds and hundreds of fossils, but they are classified into two major groups, which are body fossils, and trace fossils. Body fossils are the entire body remains of the bone structure of a fossil. Trace fossils are the remains of an animal that has walked across an area, and that area is then fossilised.

Fossil Record

What is a fossil record? Well, when you put both parts of the fossil together - a body fossil and the trace fossil - it creates a record of the behaviours and the positions of the animal, as well as the time it was there. Judging by the rock formations, where it is located and what we know of the world in those specific times, we can build a record that will show us more about the environments these animals lived in.

Evolution of Dinosaurs

So, we know that the dinosaurs lived around 65 million years ago, but not only do we know that, we also know that they lived for 100s of millions of years, and through four different periods - the Mesozoic era, the Triassic era, the Jurassic era and the Cretaceous era. Throughout these eras, the dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

Here is a YouTube video from National Geographic on Fossils:

These dinosaurs obviously died at some point, but over the 65 million years since their demise, the bones and behaviour patterns of their time on this Earth were encased in fossil form. We still don't know massive amounts of details on these creatures, despite the many films based around these times.

Fossil Fuels

To coin a phrase, the fossil fuels are the creation of oil, gas and coal from millions of years where they have been layered and crushed to form these elements. They are the direct descendants of dinosaurs. In some 65 million years' time, it is predicted that this could be the case of human remains.