Fossils
What is a fossil?
1. A fossil is a trace of
an organism that once
lived.
2. Darwin predicted that
if evolution is true, the
fossil record would
demonstrate
transitional forms
between past species
and present ones.
Many have been
found.
Archaeopteryx: dinosaur-bird transitional fossil
FIVE MAIN TYPES OF FOSSILS
Petrified Molds and Carbon
Fossils Casts Films
Trace Preserved
Fossils Remains
PETRIFIED FOSSILS
• The word “petrified” means
“turning into stone.”
• Petrified fossils form when
minerals replace all or part
of an organism.
• Water is full of dissolved
minerals. It seeps through
the layers of sediment to
reach the dead organism.
PETRIFIED FOSSIL
The Field Museum in Chicago When the water evaporates,
displays a fossil of a only the hardened minerals
Tyrannosaurus rex.
are left behind.
MOLDS AND CASTS
• A mold forms when hard parts of an
organism are buried in sediment,
such as sand, silt, or clay.
MOLD FOSSIL • The hard parts completely dissolve
This mold, or imprint, is of over time, leaving behind a hollow
an extinct mollusk called area with the organism’s shape.
an ammonite.
• A cast forms as the result of a mold.
• Water with dissolved minerals and
sediment fills the mold’s empty
spaces.
CAST FOSSIL • Minerals and sediment that are left
This ammonite cast was
in the mold make a cast.
discovered in the United
Kingdom. • A cast is the opposite of its mold.
CARBON FILMS
• All living things contain an
element called carbon.
• When an organism dies
and is buried in sediment,
the materials that make up
the organism break down.
• Eventually, only carbon
FERN FOSSIL remains.
This carbon-film fossil of a • The thin layer of carbon
fern is more than left behind can show an
300 million years old.
organism’s delicate parts,
like leaves on a plant.
TRACE FOSSILS
• Trace fossils show the
activities of organisms.
• An animal makes a footprint
when it steps in sand or mud.
• Over time the footprint is
buried in layers of sediment.
Then, the sediment becomes
FANCY FOOTWORK
This dinosaur footprint was solid rock.
found in Namibia, Africa.
PRESERVED REMAINS
Some organisms get preserved in or close to their
original states. Here are some ways that can happen.
Amber Tar Ice
An organism, An organism, An organism,
such as an insect, such as a such as a woolly
is trapped in a mammoth, is mammoth, dies in
tree’s sticky resin trapped in a tar pit a very cold
and dies. More and dies. The tar region. Its body is
resin covers it, soaks into its frozen in ice,
sealing the insect bones and stops which preserves
inside. It hardens the bones from the organism—
into amber. decaying. even its hair!
Giant Ground Sloth Bones
Do sloths have brown bones?
Giant Ground Sloth
Allosaurus Skull
Allosaurus
Ammonite Shell
Raptor Eggs
Insects trapped in amber
Flower Fossil
Leaf Imprint
3. cont… Types of Fossils
• Trace Fossils: fossilized biological activity
– Foot prints
– Teeth marks
– Burrows
– Coprolites
Dinosaur Footprints
Coprolite
Can you guess what a coprolite is?
What types of inferences can be made?
4. How do fossils form?
• Plants and animals must be buried in sediment
to fossilize (to prevent or slow decomposition)
• Over time, pressure squeezes water out of
sediment and minerals fill in the spaces forming
sedimentary rock. This may also happen to the
fossils inside.
• Fossils are often uplifted due to the activity of
tectonic plates and exposed by erosion.
HOW IS A FOSSIL FORMED?
1. Sediment
An animal is buried by 2. Layers 3. Movement 4. Erosion
sediment, such as More sediment layers Movement of tectonic Erosion from rain,
volcanic ash or silt, accumulate above the plates, or giant rock rivers, and wind wears
shortly after it dies. animal’s remains, and slabs that make up away the remaining
Its bones are minerals, such as Earth’s surface, lifts rock layers. Eventually,
protected from rotting silica (a compound of up the sediments and erosion or people
by the layer of silicon and oxygen), pushes the fossil digging for fossils will
sediment. slowly replace the closer to the surface. expose the preserved
calcium phosphate in remains.
the bones.
5. Fossil formation
1. Death 2. Sedimentation 3. Mineralization 4. Uplift 5. Erosion
How Lucy May Have Fossilized:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/04/3/quicktime/l_043_01.html
Mammoth leg bone in sandstone
Fish in shale (rock formed from mud)
6. How are fossils dated?
• Radiometric dating
– Measures absolute age of fossil by measuring the ratios
of certain radioactive elements.
– A radioactive element will decay into a more stable
element at a steady rate. The amount of time it takes for
half the remaining amount of radioactive atoms to decay
is called a half-life. Fossil ages are determined by half-
lifes.
– Can only be used on igneous (volcanic) rock
• Stratigraphy
– Sediments are added to existing layers over time.
– A fossil from a deeper layer is older than a fossil from a
layer closer to surface.
– Relative dating technique: only allows us to age one
fossil relative to another.
Radiometric Dating
Carbon-14 Dating
What is carbon-14’s half-life?
7. cont…
Radiometric Dating Problems
1. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years.
Approximately how old is a Neanderthal
skull that contains 1.5% of its original C-14?
34,380 years old
2. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion
years. Approximately how old is a layer of
volcanic rock with 75% of its U-238
remaining?
2.25 billion years old
Stratigraphy
Which would you infer is older, the skull or the pottery?
