What is a fossil? Detailed answer

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What is a fossil? Detailed answer

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What is a fossil?

The study of fossil plants and animals helps in the study of our past and allows you to find out what animals lived millions of years ago. This is the science of paleontology.

Some people think that fossils are the remains of animals that lived a very long time ago. There are actually three types of fossils. The first type includes parts of organisms that have escaped decomposition and have survived to this day in their original form. Fossils can be in the form of a cast or impression that repeats the shape of the body of an animal or plant after the animal or plant itself has disappeared. Fossils can also be traces of animals left by them on a soft surface of mud or clay.

If they find a fossil consisting of some part of the body, then these are mostly dense parts - the skeleton, the shell, which have survived to this day. Soft tissues are decomposed. But in some cases, even animals such as jellyfish, which are 99% water, leave beautiful prints on the rocks. Some fossils found in the ice have preserved not only the skeleton, but also the tissues on their bone formations.

The quality of a fossil does not depend on its size. For example, a small ant that lived many millions of years ago is perfectly preserved in a piece of amber. The degree of preservation of an animal or plant depends on the region of their residence. The most numerous are fossil marine animals - after their death, their bodies are quickly covered with bottom sediments and thus protected from decomposition. Terrestrial animals and plants are subject to the destructive effects of air and the environment.

It is mainly through the study of fossils that we know what the animal world was like hundreds of millions of years ago. For example, fossils found in rock told us that millions of years ago there was an age of reptiles, during which there were monsters 24 meters long and weighing 56 tons. They were dinosaurs. We also learned about the very first bird, called "Archaeopteryx", from two casts found.

Author: Likum A.

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