50 Fun Facts About Fossils

The word fossil comes from a Latin word meaning what?

Classical Latin fossilis; the totality of fossils is called the fossil record.

What is the scientific study of fossils called?

It covers their age, how they formed and what they mean for evolution.

Specimens are sometimes only counted as fossils once they are older than roughly what age?

Younger Holocene remains that are still too old to be modern are called subfossils.

About how old are the oldest known fossils?

The very oldest are chemical traces; the oldest stromatolites are over 3.4 billion years old.

Which technique, developed in the early 20th century, gives rocks an absolute age?

Before it, superposition and biostratigraphy gave only relative ages.

What is the largest known fossil, an 88-metre specimen found at Coaldale, Nevada?

Fossils range from one-micrometre bacteria up to trees many metres long.

What is the technical name for fossilized feces?

They count as trace fossils because they show behaviour rather than body shape.

Tracks, burrows and droppings are classed as what kind of fossil?

Their other name is ichnofossils.

Which mythical creature may have been inspired by Protoceratops skulls, according to Adrienne Mayor?

Paleontologists such as Mark Witton have contested the idea.

What were the tongue stones, or glossopetra, described by Pliny the Elder?

Nicholas Steno made the connection to sharks in 1666.

Pliny's horns of Ammon were the fossils of which group, and gave it its modern name?

They are shelled cousins of the octopus.

Toadstones, once thought to cure poison, were really the teeth of what?

The fish was Lepidotes; the belief lasted until the 18th century.

In Japan, the same fossil teeth were taken to be the claws of which mythical creature?

The association is documented from some time after the 8th century.

In medieval China, fossil mammal remains were sold as medicine under what name?

Mid-Cretaceous dinosaur bones were still being eaten in Ruyang County in the early 21st century.

Which Song dynasty scholar argued in 1088 that mountain seashells proved a shoreline had shifted?

His Dream Pool Essays also read petrified bamboo as evidence of gradual climate change.

Skulls of which extinct animal may have inspired the one-eyed Cyclopes of Greek myth?

The big central hole is actually the opening for the trunk.

Fossil sea-urchin shells associated with Thor were kept in Norse houses as what?

In England they became shepherd's crowns and, in Suffolk, bakers' fairy loaves.

Who in 1666 dissected a shark and linked its teeth to the tongue stones of legend?

He concluded they were teeth of a long-extinct shark, not serpents' tongues.

Which English canal engineer formulated the principle of faunal succession?

Darwin used the principle as one of his chief pieces of evidence for evolution.

Which French naturalist concluded most fossils were extinct species and championed catastrophism?

His 1796 elephant paper spoke of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe.

Which British collector found the first complete ichthyosaur and a complete plesiosaur?

Her finds on the Dorset coast sparked public and scholarly interest in the early 1800s.

When Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, the oldest known animal fossils dated to which period?

He worried about the missing older record and hoped such fossils would turn up; they did.

The Ediacara biota, dated to about 575 million years ago, were early examples of what?

They are also called the Vendian biota.

Who first described fossil droppings scientifically, in 1829?

Before that they were called fossil fir cones or bezoar stones.

Dating rocks by the fossils embedded in them is called what?

For geology's first 150 years it and superposition were the only ways to tell relative age.

Which paleontologists published the seminal paper on punctuated equilibrium in 1971?

Eldredge's study of Phacops trilobite eye lenses helped prompt it.

Absolute dating of fossil-bearing rock usually relies on which kind of layer?

Radioactive elements are common only in rocks of volcanic origin.

Species known from fossils amount to less than what share of known living species?

That implies far less than 1% of all species that ever lived are known from fossils.

Fossil sites with exceptional preservation are known by what German term?

Examples include the Burgess Shale and the Solnhofen Limestone.

Which famous Lagerstätte is in the Canadian Rockies?

Maotianshan is in China, Hunsrück in Germany and Mazon Creek in Illinois.

Which process fills an organism's empty spaces with minerals from groundwater?

It can preserve detail as fine as a plant cell wall.

A fossil whose aragonite has turned to calcite but kept its original compounds is called what?

Replacement, by contrast, swaps the tissue for an entirely different mineral.

Pyritization preserves organisms using which two elements?

Decaying matter releases sulfide that reacts with dissolved iron to form pyrite.

Phosphatized fossils tend to be dense and what color?

They form when calcium-phosphate minerals replace organic matter.

Silicification can turn a fossil into which of these minerals?

The silica gel dehydrates into quartz, chalcedony, agate or opal in the organism's shape.

The organism-shaped hole left in rock after the remains dissolve is called what?

If sediment later fills the hole, the result is a cast.

An internal mold formed when sediment fills a shell or skull is called what?

When bivalves are preserved this way they are sometimes called Steinkerns.

What is the carbonaceous film left by a compressed fossil fern called?

When the film and its impression survive together, the fossil is an adpression.

Which fossilization process involves one skeletal organism growing over and preserving another?

Bryozoans and oysters are typical culprits; it is known from the Ordovician to today.

Which scientist reported iron particles in dinosaur soft tissue in 2014?

She proposed that iron chelation and low oxygen helped preserve blood vessels.

What makes a good index fossil?

A short time range lets different sediments be matched precisely.

What is the usual size cutoff between microfossils and macrofossils?

Foraminifera and coccolithophores are classic microfossils.

Fossil resin is better known by what everyday name?

The oldest dates to the Triassic, though most is Cenozoic.

What are the organisms trapped inside fossil resin called?

Mostly insects and spiders; a small lizard is an extreme rarity.

A fossil eroded out of its original rock and redeposited in younger sediment is called what?

It is also known as a derived or remanié fossil.

Layered structures built by cyanobacteria in shallow water are called what?

They provide some of the most ancient fossil records of life, over 3.5 billion years old.

About how long ago did stromatolite abundance peak?

By the Cambrian they had fallen to 20% of their peak, probably eaten by grazing animals.

Rock patterns that look like fossils but were made by geology are called what?

Dendrite crystals and moss agates are classic examples.

Round concretions in sedimentary rock were once mistaken for what?

They are spherical or ovoid nodules and are still often taken for fossils.

Carbon isotope anomalies in zircons suggest life existed as early as how long ago?

Such chemofossils are the oldest traces of life on Earth.