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October 14, 2020

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During 2020 we celebrate the 11th Anniversary of National Fossil Day! Join paleontologists, educators, and students in fossil-related events and activities across the country in parks, classrooms, and online during National Fossil Day. National Fossil Day is an annual celebration held to highlight the scientific and educational value of paleontology and the importance of preserving fossils for future generations.

Next National Fossil Day is
Wednesday October 14, 2020

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National Fossil Day (U.S. National Park Service)

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During 2020 we celebrate the 11th Anniversary of National Fossil Day! Join paleontologists, educators, and students in fossil-related events and activities across the country in parks, classrooms, and online during National Fossil Day. National Fossil Day is an annual celebration held to highlight the scientific and educational value of paleontology and the importance of preserving fossils for future generations.

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Science - Exploring Fossils and Fossil Records

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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Prehistoric creatures that had hard parts such as bones, teeth and shells-including humans-left behind fossils. Fossils are the remains of living.

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How Dinosaurs Lived

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CITE

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The fossilization process

Fossils form when a dead creature is quickly buried in sediment such as mud, sand or silt, for example, on a river bed or in the sea (1) The soft parts, including the internal organs, skin and muscle, usually quickly rot away, but minerals in the water fill up all the tiny spaces inside the hard parts that remain, such as shell, bones or teeth (2) Over millions of years, the layers of sediment build up and gradually compact into hard rock. The rock layers are often tilted or folded due to Earth movements (3). If that rock layer comes to the surface, perhaps as the result of erosion, the fossil may be revealed and discovered (4).

Not only body parts formed fossils. Signs of animals did too, like footprints made in soft mud by dinosaurs. The depth of the prints and the distance between them, tell us how fast a dinosaur walked or ran.

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We have made every effort to follow citation style rules, but there may be some minor differences. If in doubt, please refer to the appropriate citation style manual.

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Fossils

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CITE

We have made every effort to follow citation style rules, but there may be some minor differences. If in doubt, please refer to the appropriate citation style manual.

A Jurassic ichthyosaur fossil How a fossil forms

This sequence of illustrations shows how a dinosaur that perished many millions of years ago came to be preserved as a fossil which we can study today.

When a creature-in this example, a dinosaur-dies under water (1) the hard parts, such as bones and teeth, may be buried under sediment particles such as sand grains on a beach, silt on a river bank or mud on a sea bed (2). Slowly the surrounding water dissolves away the remains and replaces them with rock minerals from the water.

Meanwhile the particles around them also turn into rock. If undisturbed, the remains keep their original shape but they are now solid rock. They are now fossils (3). The remains of animals and plants that lived at the same time become fossilized in the same rocks. So scientists can use fossils to work out what life-forms existed at different times in the past.

Fossils take millions of years to form. As a result of Earth movements caused by plate tectonics and the wearing-away forces of erosion, the rocks in which fossils form may one day be exposed at or near the surface (4).

Experts called palaeontologists search for fossils, dig them from the ground, study their shapes and structures, and compare them with similar body parts of living things today. From this evidence, it is possible for them to recreate what dinosaurs, mammoths and other animals and plants that lived millions of years ago looked like, and even gather information about how they lived.

Fossils form only in sedimentary rocks. They are destroyed if the rock is heated or squashed too much so they do not occur in igneous rocks or metamorphic rocks. Some sediments contain layer upon layer of fossils, like certain types of limestone.

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We have made every effort to follow citation style rules, but there may be some minor differences. If in doubt, please refer to the appropriate citation style manual. A Jurassic ichthyosaur fossil How a fossil forms This sequence of illustrations shows how a dinosaur that perished many millions of years ago came to be preserved as a fossil which we can study today.

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How fossils form

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Fossils and dinosaurs

Hello! My name is Andreas and I want to tell you all about fossils and dinosaurs. The study of fossils is called palaeontology.

Fossils are fantastic evidence of past life on our planet; they are found mainly in sedimentary rocks . But how did they get there? Well, getting turned into a fossil is not an easy task and needs a rare combination of events to take place:

An ammonite bobs around happily in the sea. . .

. . .but then dies and falls to the sea floor. . .

. . .the soft parts decay leaving the shell to be buried in sediment. . .

. . .then is changed by heated water and pressure over millions of years. . .

. . . into the fossil that you find on the beach!

There are lots of different types of fossils including bones, shells, footprints and burrows. Most fossils we find today are creatures that lived their lives in the sea. This is because they were most likely to be buried before all trace of them disappeared!

Learn about some sea creatures that we regularly find fossilised:

Jurassic age rocks are shown in brown on this map of Afghanistan. These rocks might contain the fossils of dinosaurs!

Creatures living on land can also be fossilised, it just happens less often. Dinosaurs are a great example of this; they lived 230 to 65 million years ago and have been found fossilised all over the world.

Fossils are very helpful when making geological maps as they can tell us how old a rock is. Scientists have worked out that creatures looked different at different times - they evolved so that they could survive better. So if we find the same fossil in two different rocks we know they are the same age!

More information

Fossils, especially the stunning ones found in museums, are beautiful and delicate reminders of the age of the earth and of the diversity of life.

Most of the fossils that we might find on beaches or in quarries are often imperfect and have been damaged by their time in the rocks; but these common fossils contain vital information, for they are our direct evidence for the past life of our planet, Earth.

A bone or a shell, a footprint or a feeding trace, are clues left by animals and plants from which we are able to reconstruct their lives.

These clues can be used to assess the environments in which the fossils lived. A fossil might contain information about the temperature of the sea in which the living organism swam, or demonstrate the existence of old oceans that have now disappeared.

By studying their shape and patterns of evolution, fossils enable us to build up a picture of the history of life of our planet and the great evolutionary forces which have changed the face of our world.

Get involved

Do you like fossil collecting? Tell us what you've found and your favourite places to seek out new fossils using our online form.

Let's see what else we can find out about fossils and dinosaurs. Try searching the internet for:

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Hello! My name is Andreas and I want to tell you all about fossils and dinosaurs. The study of fossils is called palaeontology. Fossils are fantastic evidence of past life on our planet; they are found mainly in sedimentary rocks . But how did they get there?

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DK Learning: Make every lesson your best yet

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DK's uniquely visual approach engages students, enhancing their learning experience

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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Animals Past and Present - University of Illinois Extension

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