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You can learn SO MANY fun facts about fossils here, including what they are, some examples, and how they occur over time.

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Fossils are the preserved remains, or traces of remains, of ancient animals and plants.

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Here you can explore the dinosaur fossils found in Tennessee and learn important vocabulary in the fossil world.

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Did dinosaurs live in Tennessee? The answer is yes! Most people think of dinosaurs as living in western states like Montana and Wyoming. The truth is dinosaur bones have been found all over the world. And Tennessee is on the list.
"Monty" the Edmontosaurus statue, Frank H. McClung Museum
The first dinosaur bones found in Tennessee were actually discovered twice. One day in the University of Tennessee's paleontology collection, five dinosaur fossils were found among the many artifacts. The records said they had been brought to Knoxville by paleontologist R. Lee Collins. He worked for the Tennessee Division of Geology. They did not know who found them or where. Now, we think they were probably found in the 1940s in West Tennessee. The fossils are now part of the collection of the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

In 1992, the Oxford Museum of Natural History identified the fossils as an Edmontosaurus (ed-MON-toe-SORE-us). Fossils from this kind of dinosaur were first found in Canada. It was named in 1917 and means "lizard of Edmonton" in Latin. It was named for the nearby city of Edmonton, Canada. Since then, more fossils have been found throughout North America.

Edmontosaurus was a type of Hadrosaur (HAY-dro-SORE-us) or duck-billed dinosaur. There are over 50 different types of Hadrosaurs. It is one of the few dinosaurs found on two continents: North America and Asia.

It lived during the Cretaceous period (145 million years ago-66 million years ago). At that time, Tennessee looked a lot different than it does today. The land looked more like Louisiana than Tennessee with swamps and marshes. The perfect habitat for our dinosaur.
Image by Emilee Dehmer
The five fossils found in Tennessee included three tail vertebrae (spine bone), part of the fibula (leg bone), and phalanx (foot bone). From the bones, scientists can tell our dinosaur was probably 26-29 feet in length. That is close to the length of a school bus! Some adults were as big as 40 feet in length, 12 feet tall, and weighed more than the biggest modern elephant.
Image Courtesy of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation
Edmontosaurus walked on four legs but could stand on two legs. They were herbivores and ate pine needles and cones, twigs, fruits, and seeds. They had a broad, flat beak with no teeth in the front of their mouth. They had powerful jaws used for grinding their food. They had hundreds of teeth over their lifetime that constantly replaced lost ones. They looked like the molars we have at the back of our mouths.

Currently the Tennessee State Museum does not have any dinosaur fossils in our collection. We do have several other fossils from that time period. We also have a dinosaur egg from China. The egg was found in a nest in the Henan Providence in 2000. It was identified as possibly a Saurolophus (sore-OLL-uh-fuss) or "crested lizard", another type of Hadrosaur.

Hadrosaur egg, TSM Collection

Finding dinosaur fossils in Tennessee is rare. Edmontosaurus is the only land dinosaur fossil found in Tennessee. We have also found other "sea-going" dinosaur fossils. They include the Mosasaur, Plesiosaur, and two different sharks. It is important to keep in mind that just because more fossils have not been found that does not mean other dinosaurs didn't live in Tennessee. Maybe one day you will find a fossil of an animal that lived millions of years ago.

Paleontology - the study of animal and plant fossils.

Fossil - a print or the remains of an animal or plant from the past preserved in earth or rock. (For example: footprints or bones)

Geology - the science of Earth's history, past life as recorded in rocks and its features like mountains.

Herbivore - an animal that eats only plants.

Habitat - the place where a plant or animal lives.

Where was the Edmontosaurus first found?

What two continents are their fossils found?

What kind of food did the Edmontosaurus eat?

What would you do if you found a dinosaur fossil in Tennessee?

Design your own dinosaur to live in Tennessee today. What would it eat? How big would it be? What would it look like? Draw a picture of your dinosaur and its habitat.

Watch National Geographic's video "Dinosaur: 101" to learn more about dinosaurs. (3:47 minutes) -

Visit the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture in Knoxville to see a life-sized replica of a Hadrosaur named "Monty" as well as other fossils. For more information, visit https://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/visit/
Tennessee State Social Studies Standard(s)
1.23 Use correct words and phrases related to chronology and time, including: past, present, and future.

3.03 Examine major physical features on globes and maps, including: Basin, Bay, Canal, Canyon, Delta, Desert, Gulf, Island, Isthmus, Mountain, Ocean, Peninsula, Plain, Plateau, River, Sea, Strait, Stream, and Valley.

6.01 Identify the meaning of time designations and abbreviations used by historians, including: BC / BCE, AD / CE, Circa (c. or ca), decades, centuries.

AH.04 Explain how archaeology and new technologies (e.g., 3D imaging and dating tools) inform our understanding of the past.
Tennessee Science Standard(s)
4.LS4: Biological Change: Unity and Diversity

1) Obtain information about what a fossil is and ways a fossil can provide information about the past.

5.LS4: Biological Change: Unity and Diversity

1) Analyze and interpret data from fossils to describe types of organisms and their environments that existed long ago. Compare similarities and differences of those to living organisms and their environments. Recognize that most kinds of animals (and plants) that once lived on Earth are now extinct.

8.LS4: Biological Change: Unity and Diversity

1) Analyze and interpret data for patterns in the fossil record that document the existence, diversity, extinction, and change in life forms throughout Earth's history.
Jennifer Watts is an Educator at the Tennessee State Museum.

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Did dinosaurs live in Tennessee? The answer is yes! Most people think of dinosaurs as living in western states like Montana and Wyoming. The truth is dinosaur bones have been found all over the world. And Tennessee is on the list.

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You can learn more in depth information about what a fossil is and how it is formed, as well as what information fossils can provide about evolution and the past.

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Shells and fragments of shells are a common type of fossil encountered in sedimentary rocks. Their hardness favors preservation.

What Are Fossils?

Fossils are remains or other evidence of organisms that lived in the past and are preserved in the rocks. Common fossils include hard parts like bones, teeth and eggs of animals, wood, leaves and other parts of plants, shells, corals, and tiny shells of microfossils. Exceptionally, soft tissue of plants and animals may be found fossilized in permafrost (like Ice Age mammoths preserved in the Siberian tundra), insects and seeds preserved in amber (resin from trees), bodies of animals preserved by mummification, plant material preserved in peat, and other rare occurrences of fossilized soft tissue. Some fossils consist of impressions of body parts, for example, the mark of the skin of dinosaurs left on the preserved footprints, impressions of plant leaves and insects, etc. Some ancient molecules (DNA, protein, keratin, collagen, etc.) have been preserved in bones, shells and other fossils.

Another type of fossils is called trace fossils or ichnofossils, in which no body parts are preserved, but evidence is preserved of the activity of the organism before it died. Common ichnofossils are burrows made in the sediment before it became indurated, footprints of vertebrates and invertebrates walking on soft ground, borings in shells and rocks, coprolites (fossil excrements), and root traces.

Dinosaur trackways are an example of ichnofossils. The main trackway in this picture is thought to have been left by an ankylosaurid (hammer for scale). Torotoro, Bolivia. Well developed fossil trackways imply a special set of conditions, with sediment wet enough for footprints to remain impressed followed by prompt induration and burial.

The many different kinds of fossils occurring in sedimentary layers form what is called the fossil record. The fossil record is incomplete and biased. That means that many groups of organisms are rarely or never represented as fossils. Some kinds of organisms are much scarcer as fossils than when they were alive. Most animals that live today are insects or other land invertebrates, but they are very rare in the fossil record. The fossil record is biased in that animals with hard shells and skeletons are represented better than soft-bodied animals or plants (jellyfish, insects, algae, etc.). It is also biased in that land animals are poorly represented. Despite these limitations, paleontologists agree that the fossil record is adequate to study the past.

How Do Fossils Form?

Fossils occur in sedimentary rocks, namely rocks that formed by accumulation of small particles as sand or clay, or by chemical or biological precipitation of minerals like calcite or silica. The collection or set of fossils is called fossil record, which is a record of death in the past. In order for organisms to become fossils, three main conditions are necessary. First, possession of hard parts like bones, shells or wood, though, exceptionally, soft parts may fossilize. Second, the organisms must be buried rapidly during or after death. What happens if rapid burial does not occur? Based on what happens in modern environments, dead organisms are scavenged by other organisms or decay and are destroyed by bacterial decomposition. The likelihood of preservation is extremely low without rapid burial following death. A third condition is determinant for fossilization: there must be an exchange of minerals between the buried parts and the sediment That exchange happens because of the presence of water in the sediment during burial.

How Long Does It Take to Form a Fossil?

The fossilization process cannot require millions of years. In fact, it may happen really fast. Observations in modern environments indicate that decay of fish, shrimp, jellyfish, sea stars, insects, etc. occurs in a few days or weeks after death, if they are not scavenged. If the three conditions for fossilization mentioned above occur, fossils may form relatively quickly. Paleontologists assert that organisms may become fossils in a span of time between a few hours to a few years.

A fossilized instance of cannibalism in Dastilbe crandalli, a Cretaceous fish from the Crato Fm., Brazil. Unique environmental conditions are required for spectacular preservation of fossil fish. This form of cannibalism is also interpreted as indicative of stressful environmental conditions. Specimen on display at the Paleontological Museum in Santana do Cariri. Fish is about 10 cm in size.

What Do We Learn from Fossils?

Fossils tell us a story of life in the past. They may also tell us how an organism died, usually by rapid burial during a catastrophe. By examining the physical characteristics of the fossils, we may infer their original size, shape, method of locomotion, diet, and even behavior and ecological relations with other organisms and the environment in which they lived. The study of the enclosing sediment gives us important information to infer the environmental conditions in which the organisms lived or were transported and buried. For example, dinosaur footprints are common in many areas of the world, and the study of the prints and the sediment in which they occur gives us a glimpse about the size of these animals, their locomotion and behavior. Only in extremely rare instances fossils tell us something about their original coloration or the physiology of their internal organs.

Do Fossils Occur in a Specific Order in the Geologic Layers?

The geological record consists of layers, many of which contain fossils. These fossils do not occur randomly throughout the layers, but in a sequence that seems consistent in different localities across the planet. The sequence in which they occur may be interpreted differently depending on the worldview of the observer. One explanation is that the fossil record was formed by the catastrophic global Genesis flood, as written in the Bible.

In a global flood, the lowest surfaces would be expected to be covered first with water and sediment. Since the lowest surfaces are the ocean floors, we would expect to find marine fossils to form before terrestrial fossils. As the ocean floors were covered with sediment, we might expect to find fossils of species from low-lying terrestrial areas, followed by fossils of species from higher elevations. This theory was first proposed by Harold W Clark[1] and is called the Ecological Zonation Theory.

Several predictions of Ecological Zonation Theory are fulfilled in the fossil record. For example, the lowest layers with abundant fossils have only marine organisms, representatives of most of the body plans, or phyla, known from living organisms, as well as many types that are now extinct. The abrupt appearance of diverse types of marine animals at the bottom of the fossil layers is famously known as the Cambrian Explosion. Also, fossils of terrestrial organisms appear in a sequence that correlates reasonably well with increasing terrestriality (i.e., the degree to which an organism is fit for life on land). We would expect that species living in the first habitats to be destroyed would be least likely to have survived the flood and still be living. In general, this is what we find. These general patterns are consistent with Ecological Zonation Theory. However, there has been very little research on the theory, and much more research is needed.

Does the Fossil Record Suggest Evolutionary Change?

The fossil sequence shows us the sequence in which various types of organisms were buried, but it does not tell us how the fossilized organisms originated. The worldview of materialistic Darwinism and theologies such as theistic evolution attempt to explain the fossil sequence as a record of evolutionary change over long ages of time. Evolutionary theories explain some features of the fossil record, such as the sequence of first appearances of the vertebrate classes, and the gradually changing composition of fossil assemblages in some parts of the geologic column. On the other hand, it has been notably unsuccessful in explaining other features of the fossil sequence, such as the abrupt appearance of diverse animal forms in the Cambrian layers, a feature known as the "Cambrian Explosion." The first fossils in the basal Cambrian layers show high complexity and diversity, something not predicted by Darwinian theory, but which fits well in the global Genesis Flood model. The pattern of abrupt appearance of fully formed and diverse species within groups is repeated on a less spectacular scale in other organisms such as dinosaurs, and flowering plants.

Gradual evolution also fails to explain adequately the shortage of potential transitional links between the different types of organisms throughout the column. The majority, if not all, of animal and plant forms appear abruptly in the fossil record without known ancestors or intermediate forms. For example, bats, ants, dragonflies, cockroaches and many others appear in the fossil record without any apparent ancestors, and look much like their modern counterparts. This pattern of abrupt appearance does not fit models that invoke gradual evolution, and may fit better in a creation and global catastrophe model. Moreover, Darwinian theory fails to explain how changes in genetic information can produce new types of organs and body plans. Because of these failures, Darwinian theory is not a satisfactory explanation for the fossil sequence.
Raul Esperante, PhD
Senior Scientist
Geoscience Research Institute
References

[1] Clark, HW. The New Diluvialism. (Angwin, CA: Science Publications, 1946)

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Fossils are remains or other evidence of organisms that lived in the past and are preserved in the rocks. Common fossils include hard parts like bones, teeth and eggs of animals, wood, leaves and other parts of plants, shells, corals, and tiny shells of microfossils.

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You can learn how dinosaur fossils are formed and how they are found.

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How do dinosaur fossils form? | Natural History Museum

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Here you can learn how important paleontologists are to fossil finding. You can also learn their duties and responsibilities, what types of paleontologists there are, and what their day to day life is like.

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What is a Paleontologist?

Paleontologists study the fossilized remains of all kinds of organisms - plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and other single-celled living things - so as to understand the history of organic life on earth.

A paleontologist's work will vary depending on the scope of research or discoveries, and may involve working closely with archeology teams.

What does a Paleontologist do?

Paleontologists study the relationship between extinct plants and animals and their living relatives today. They study fossils, and use them to put together pieces of history that made up the earth and life on it.

Fossils are defined as any trace of a past life form, and most fossils are several thousands to several millions or billions of years old. In trying to understand extinction events of the past, paleontologists hope to apply their scientific conclusions to extinction in the modern world as environments and global climates change.

There are several areas of study within paleontology that aspiring paleontologists can choose from:

Biostratigraphy - The study of the vertical distribution of fossils in rocks

Invertebrate Paleontology - The study of fossils of animals without backbones

Paleobotany - The study of plant fossils

Micropaleontology - The study of fossils of single-celled organisms

Vertebrate Paleontology - The study of fossils of animals with backbones

Paleoecology - The study of ancient ecosystems and how they developed

Taphonomy - The study of how fossils form and are preserved

Typical things a paleontologist does:

Determines location of fossils

Excavates layers of sedimentary rock to locate fossils

Gathers information on the fossils (age, location, etc)

Uses specific tools to excavate (chisels, drills, picks, shovels, brushes)

Evaluates any discoveries by using specialized computer programs

Compares new data to existing data

Analyzes findings in the lab

Identifies time period of fossils found

Shares results with colleagues from other scientific disciplines

Note the differences between Paleontologists, Archaeologists, and Anthropologists:

Paleontologists - study all life forms, and all types of organisms

Archaeologists - study objects, or artifacts, that have been made by humans

Anthropologists - study ancient cultures, societies, ways of life, and languages

Are you suited to be a paleontologist?

Paleontologists have distinct personalities. They tend to be investigative individuals, which means they're intellectual, introspective, and inquisitive. They are curious, methodical, rational, analytical, and logical. Some of them are also enterprising, meaning they're adventurous, ambitious, assertive, extroverted, energetic, enthusiastic, confident, and optimistic.

Does this sound like you? Take our free career test to find out if paleontologist is one of your top career matches.

Take the free test now Learn more about the career test

What is the workplace of a Paleontologist like?

A paleontologist can work in museums and historical exhibits, oil, gas and mining companies, the government, colleges, universities, and as a consultant. Many paleontologists travel around the world searching for fossils.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a geologist and a paleontologist?

A geologist is someone who is involved in the study of the outer layer of the earth's crust. The objective of geology is to understand the history of the planet we live on; to better predict the future and to explain current occurrences of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides.

A paleontologist, on the other hand, looks at the fossil remains of many types of organisms on the Earth's surface. Paleontology is the study of primitive life, including plant and animal organisms, fungi, bacteria, etc.
Continue reading

Paleontologists are also known as:
Palaeontologist

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Paleontologists study the fossilized remains of all kinds of organisms - plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and other single-celled living things - so as to understand the history of organic life on earth. A paleontologist's work will vary depending on the scope of research or discoveries, and may involve working closely with archeology teams. Paleontologists study the relationship between extinct plants and animals and their living relatives today.

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Learn all about paleontology and fossil finding.

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This is a site where you can view and read all about the most recent fossil news, including the most recent discoveries and fossil finds within the last 10 years. Many articles and fossil finds are as recent as May of 2023!

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With fossils few and far between, paleontologists have shied away from estimating the size of extinct populations. But scientists decided to try, focusing on the North American predator T. rex. Using ...

A new study verifies the age and origin of one of the oldest specimens of Homo erectus -- a very successful early human who roamed the world for nearly 2 million years. In doing so, the researchers ...

The rapid extinction of giant animals including wombat-like creatures as big as cars, birds more than two metres tall, and lizards more than seven metres long that once roamed the Australian ...

An amber fossil of a Cretaceous beetle has shed some light on the diet of one of the earliest pollinators of flowering ...

A new 160-million-year-old arboreal pterosaur species, dubbed 'Monkeydactyl', has the oldest true opposed thumb - a novel structure previously not known in ...

Gray wolves are among the largest predators to have survived the extinction at the end of the last ice age. A new study analysing teeth and bones shows that the wolves may have survived by adapting ...

The human brain as we know it today is relatively young. It evolved about 1.7 million years ago when the culture of stone tools in Africa became increasingly complex. A short time later, the new Homo ...

Along the Tian Shan and Alay mountain ranges of Central Asia, sheep and other domestic livestock form the core economy of contemporary life. Although it was here that the movements of their ancient ...

Ancient genomes shed new light on the earliest Europeans and their relationships with ...

The fossil skull of a woman in Czechia has provided the oldest modern human genome yet reconstructed, representing a population that formed before the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians ...

The recent discovery of four new species of ancient insects are leading scientists to question the evolutionary history of the snakefly. The fossils, discovered in British Columbia and Washington ...

For centuries, people in Baltic nations have used ancient amber for medicinal purposes. Even today, infants are given amber necklaces that they chew to relieve teething pain, and people put ...

The asteroid that took out the dinosaurs left the planet in darkness. What did rainforests in South America look like before the impact, and how did they change as a ...

Palaeontologists have now analyzed the bone structures of 400 million-year-old fossils of marine life at unprecedentedly high resolution and in 3D. To be able to view these structures, tomography ...

A new study has found the first evidence of sophisticated breathing organs in 450-million-year-old sea creatures. Contrary to previous thought, trilobites were leg breathers, with structures ...

What did the ancestor of all bacteria look like, where did it live and what did it feed on? A team of researchers has now found answers to these questions by analyzing biochemical metabolic networks ...

Superbly preserved braincase of this new species is an important find - it suggests there was a greater diversity and abundance of abelisaurids late in dinosaurs' era than previously ...

A team of researchers has examined the fossil record of these apex predators and found out that modern tiger sharks are older than previously ...

The largest flightless bird ever to live weighed in up to 600kg and had a whopping head about half a meter long - but its brain was squeezed for space. Dromornis stirtoni, the largest of the ...

A research has uncovered solid clues about the very beginning of the supercontinent cycle of Earth, finding it was kick-started two billion years ...

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fossils; fossil; living records; living fossil; ancient fossils; geologic records; macrofossils; billion years; million years; radiocarbon; paleontologist; era; extinct; skull; bone; ancient; tusk; tusked; amber; specimen; oldest organisms; ancient; protein; dna; genome

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With fossils few and far between, paleontologists have shied away from estimating the size of extinct populations. But scientists decided to try, focusing on the North American predator T. rex. Using ... A new study verifies the age and origin of one of the oldest specimens of Homo erectus -- a very successful early human who roamed the world for nearly 2 million years.

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We can learn about past climates based on fossil finds, according to this video.

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How do tiny fossils help us learn about past climates? | Natural History Museum

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You can read all about the things we learn from fossils and everything fossils teach us about the past and what it was like back then.

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The fossilized remains of once-living organisms -- animal, plants and humans -- offer scientists a glimpse into past. Fossils have long fascinated both paleontologists and enthusiasts for their ability to tell a story of a time long past. Most fossils show the shape of activity of extinct creatures and human ancestors, but some come from species that exist today.

Most of the organisms that died out long ago never became fossils: conditions need to be just right. Many fossils form on the sea floor, an animal dies, and sinks or gets swept to the bottom of the ocean, where its body rots away. Over time, the sediment around the bone hardens and the bone dissolves, forming a mold. The water slowly deposits its minerals in the mold, making a fossil.

While some fossils show the skeleton of a long-dead creature, others are more subtle. Sometimes when a dinosaur stepped in muddy areas, sand filled the tracks before they washed away. With time the sand hardens, leaving behind a fossil of a footprint, called a trace fossil. From these, scientists learn about the behaviors of extinct species.

Whether the fossils are of humans or dinosaurs, they can teach scientists much about species and cultures that existed in the past. Scientists use fossils to make educated guesses about the evolution of different species, and what the climate was like in eras long past.

Researchers have a few ways of telling the age of a fossil, depending on the rough estimate of when it formed. For instance, aging particularly old fossils requires Carbon-14 dating, a process by which scientists study the radioactive decay of elements in the fossil. Scientists can age more recent fossils by a process called the molecular genetic clock, which compares the differences in DNA between a fossil and similar species alive today. Because DNA rapidly decays, it can only be used on older specimen.

As these fossilized species no-longer exist, scientists can really only guess about the true nature of the creatures from which they came. While in previous years, scientists believed dinosaurs to be scaled, recent interpretations of fossils suggest they had feathers.

Scientists studying sedimentary rocks on Greenland found small graphite microparticles believed to be the fossilized remains of byproducts produced by ancient bacteria, one of the earliest forms of life from 3.7 billion years ago.

In 2017, scientists discovered the remains of what they now believe to be the world's largest land animal. Called Patagotitan mayorum, the fossilized remains suggest that the long-necked creature was 120-feet long, and possibly weighed 69 tonnes, over 150,000 pounds. Even creepy-crawlies were larger in pre-history. University of Manitoba paleontologists found the remains of a 28-inch long trilobite while searching for fossils near Hudson Bay.

After a while, some fossilized species stopped showing up, suggesting that those species went extinct. Scientists date one such event to 65 million years ago and suggest that a giant meteorite crashed into Earth and killed many of the species. Fossil records also exist for the species that survived this event, and how it changed their physiology.

Massive lumbering dinosaurs did not create fossil fuels. Rather, it was microscopic organisms called diatoms. Fossil fuel, a non-renewable resource, formed from these tiny creatures dying in large numbers. Pressure and temperature on the sedimentary rock which covered their remains converted the remaining carbon from their bodies into fuel.

Like fossil fuels, fossils themselves are becoming increasingly rare. Since it takes a long time for them to form, and they form under specific conditions, the reservoir of fossils in the Earth grows smaller and smaller each time a scientist takes one out of the ground.

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The fossilized remains of once-living organisms -- animal, plants and humans -- offer scientists a glimpse into past. Fossils have long fascinated both paleontologists and enthusiasts for their ability to tell a story of a time long past. Most fossils show the shape of activity of extinct creatures and human ancestors, but some come from species that exist today.