What Do You Know About Fossils?
Paleontology is a separate science dealing with the study of fossils. The study helps man to know about his own past and the animals that lived on the earth millions of years ago. This is a very important branch of study.
Many people think, that the fossils are the remains of bodies, buried ages in the past. In reality, there are three different kinds of fossils. The first kind is the actual body or organism preserved from decay. This kind appears as it was originally. The cast or mold of the body which remains after the body of the plant or animal has removed is also called a fossil. The footprints or trails of animals that are available, because of their movement over soft muds or clays are also called fossils.
A fossil consists of a part of the organism itself. It relates to usually the hard parts, which may consist of skeletons or shells that have remained preserved. The softer parts of the body decay or get destroyed. In certain cases, even soft parts or soft-bodied animals like “Jellyfish” which are water up to 99% have left perfect fossils of themselves in rocks. There are fossils found encashed in ice. In this case, the skeleton, flesh, skin, and bones are found preserved.
The fossils have nothing to do with the size. The fossils of tiny ants having lived for millions of years ago can be found preserved in amber. The chances for animals being preserved as fossils, de-pend mostly on where they lived. The water animals are the most numerous of all fossils. The reason is that their bodies are quickly covered by mud on death and keep on decaying. The land plants and animals are exposed to destroying action of the weather.
The study of fossils tells us about animal life as it existed millions of years ago. The fossils taken from certain rocks tell us about an Age of Reptiles, huge monsters of 25 meters in length, weighing 45 tonnes. There were the dinosaurs. Our knowledge about the early birds, called “the archaeopteryx” is based on only two fossils that have been found.
