Fossils can reveal an incredible amount of information. Fossils show us what kinds of organisms lived in what places and when they lived there. Fossilized leaves can tell us the average temperature of an area (the higher the ratio of serrated leaves to leaves with an even edge, the colder the average temperature). Thanks to fossils, there is hard evidence for the theory of plate tectonics (that continents drift slowly over time).
We can learn things about a specific organism, too. For example, the teeth of an animal can tell us what it probably ate, the bones from limbs tell us how it moved and even how quickly.
Fossils also can show us how organisms evolved over time.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the immense amount of knowledge that has been gained by studying fossils.
Fossils can reveal a huge variety of things about an organism. Here are just a few:
1. Where a fossil was found tells us where the organism lived. What layer of rock or sediment it was found in tells us how old it is.
2. We can find out what the organism is similar and/or related to by comparing it with other organisms.
3. We can find out an organism's size and what it looked like.
4. In the case of animals, we can determine diet by the teeth, jaws, and sometimes remnants of food in the stomach that was also fossilized.
how the species evolved
fossils that are made from parts of an organism's body
Fossils reveal what organisms lived before us.
It can reveal the sex (gender) of an organism. It can also reveal whether the organism has the correct number of chromosomes or not.
what fossils reveal about things that lived in death valley
Fossils created when minerals gradually replace the organic material of an organism, preserving its shape and structure, are called petrified fossils or replacement fossils. Over time, the original material is dissolved, and minerals fill the space, creating a fossilized replica of the organism.
Those types of fossils are called index fossils.
Two kinds of fossils are body fossils, which preserve the actual remains or impressions of an ancient organism, and trace fossils, which are indirect evidence of an organism's activity, such as footprints or burrows.
Any organism or parts of an organism counts as a fossil when preserved within amber, so fossils can be stored in amber.
Fossils formed when an organism dissolves and leaves an empty space in a rock are called molds. Molds are negative imprints of the organism's shape left in the surrounding rock.
Five types of fossils found in rocks are petrified fossils (minerals replace organic matter), mold fossils (imprint of an organism), cast fossils (mold filled with minerals), carbon films (thin layer of carbon residue), and trace fossils (evidence of organism's activity).
you tell me