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Fossils and fossil typesWe learn about the earth’s past by studying rocks. Evidence of animals that lived long ago is preserved in rocks as fossils. Fossils are marks or material left in rock layers by living things. Fossils are created in several ways. These are some fossil types:
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Dinosaurs are fascinating to people because they are animals that lived all
over the world, then suddenly disappeared. We have learned about dinosaurs from
the discovery of both body fossils and trace fossils. Body fossils include parts
of the dinosaur’s actual body, such as teeth, bones, or scales. Body fossils are
rare because they only exist in the place where the dinosaur died and was
buried. Trace fossils are traces or marks of the dinosaur’s life, such as bite
marks, nests, eggs, droppings, and footprints. Most fossils are trace fossils,
since dinosaurs left marks on the earth almost every day they lived. While body
fossils give important facts about the size and shape of a dinosaur, they tell
little about the life of a dinosaur. Trace fossils (ichnofossils) can show how a
dinosaur moved, hunted, rested, ate, made families, and much more. One of the
most interesting and informative of the trace fossil types is the dinosaur
footprint. The scientific study of dinosaur tracks is called paleoichnology from
Greek palaios, meaning ancient, and ichnos, meaning footprint. The
first known dinosaur tracks were discovered in 1802 in Massachusetts and
were first studied by Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864). Hitchcock was one of the
first dinosaur track scholars in the world, as a professor at Amherst College.
In the 1830s, he published his first work on dinosaur footprints and is
generally credited with the theory that dinosaurs had their evolutionary origin
in birds.
