Fossils Store A Wealth Of Information
by Ashley Luse, age 12
You
can learn a lot from a dinosaur fossil. For instance, you can learn
how old the living creature was before it died and became a fossil.
You can even learn where a creature lived and what it ate based on
its fossilized remains.
Fossils
take millions of years to fossilize. Most fossils form in seas, lakes
or rivers, where sand and mad can easily cover and begin to preserve
the object. Before a fossil of a creature is formed, its soft parts
must first rot away. The remaining shell becomes buried in mud. This
mud turns into rock, which also turns the shell into rock, thus
forming a fossil.
Materials
that decompose slowly are most likely to become fossils. Body parts
such as bones, teeth, horns, claws, and shells are the slowest
decomposing parts of a creature. Plant materials can even decompose
slowly. These materials include bark, seeds and cones.
Although
most fossils come from the body parts of a creature, there are also
some that come from the signs, traces or remains that they left while
alive. These include nests, tunnels, eggshells, footprints, and claw
and teeth marks on food.
Even
fossilized dinosaur droppings have been discovered. They have broken
bits of food inside, revealing what the dinosaur ate. These
fossilized dinosaur droppings have helped scientists to learn more
about what dinosaurs consumed.
Scientists
are continuously discovering new information from fossils. With this
information, they can learn many interesting facts about various
creatures that roamed the Earth millions of years ago.
[Source:
11 Things
You Should Know About Dinosaurs
]
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