Fossils EARTH SCIENCE 11 (Lesson 5)
★ EARTH MATERIAL AND RESOURCES
● Fossils
- Are the remains of creatures that lived long ago.
- So, fossils include organic matter buried beneath layers of rocks. A fuel is a source
of energy.
- Without fossil fuels, most people could not drive their cars.
- They could not turn on their lights or heat their homes.
- This is because most of the energy needed to do these things comes from fossil
fuels.
- The energy in fossil fuels originally came from the Sun.
- Plants use the energy in sunlight to make their own food.
- The energy in plants passes to the animals that eat the plants.
- Some energy remains in plants and animals that die and become fossil fuels.
- Burning the fossil fuels releases the energy for humans to use.
- Fossil fuels are formed when organic matter that has buried deep within the earth
are subject to heat and pressure over millions of years.
- Over time, they were buried by thousands of feet of sand and sediment, which
turned into sedimentary rock.
- As the layers increased, they pressed harder and harder on the decayed remains
at the bottom. The heat and pressure eventually changed the remains into
petroleum.
- Most of the fossils that become fossil fuels are the remains of much smaller plants
and animals.
- The effects of pressure and temperature can change organic matter into fossil
fuels. The transformation takes millions of years.
- Heat and Pressure are two main forces that transform organic matter into fossil
fuels.
● Sedimentary Rock
- It is made of bits of other rocks. Processes such as weathering break down rocks
at Earth’s surface.
- These bits of broken rock are called sediments.
- Sediments form layers at the bottoms of valleys and seas.
- New layers increase the pressure on older layers.
- This pressure compacts the sediments. (During compaction, bits of rock are
pressed tightly together.)
- Over time, water flows through the compacted sediments. Most of the water on
Earth contains dissolved minerals.
- Some of these minerals stick to the sediments. Eventually, enough minerals stick
to form a kind of cement.
- The sediments become sedimentary rocks. Over millions of years, pressure from
the rocks changed some of the organic matter into oil. (Another word for this
kind of oil is petroleum.) Given enough pressure, organic matter can also
become natural gas.
● Weathering
- The breakdown of rocks into smaller particles from the effects of wind, water, and
ice.
- Compaction happens when sediments are packed tightly together. Cementation
binds the sediments together to form a rock.
● Coal
- Forms from dead plants that sink to the bottoms of swamps.
- The organic matter is buried under sediments and slowly transformed into peat.
- If the peat is buried under more sediment, it can become coal. There are several
kinds of coal.
- Coal that has experienced greater pressure contains more energy.
- Some people consider coal to be a type of sedimentary rock. The other kinds of
fossil fuels, oil and natural gas, are not rocks.
- They formed from microscopic animals that lived in ancient seas. When these
tiny creatures died, they were buried beneath layers of sediments.
