You can study fossils to recreate their ecology and environment just like a professional paleontologist.
Fossils are traces and remains of formerly living things. Analysis of fossils is the combined branch of both biology and geology known as paleontology. You can learn some of the basic methods for analyzing fossils employed by professional paleontologists. You will know identify and classify fossils according to the rules of biological taxonomy and determine the approximate age of a fossil using the science of geochronology. Geochronology involves an analysis of the rock substrate in which the fossil occurs and its association with other fossils. You will also learn to describe fossil taphonomy, which includes the changes that take place after death of the organism such as decay, scavenging, burial, and mineral alteration. You will infer ecological and environmental conditions from surrounding rocks and neighboring fossils to recreate what life was like for the fossil organism when it was still alive.
Instructions
Study Fossils like a Professional Paleontologist
1. Select your resources including your notebook, fossil identification guides and paleontology textbooks. The "Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Fossils" and "The Fossil Book" by Fenton and Fenton are excellent paleontology references.
2. Collect fossils from a known rock outcrop or geologic formation to which you have access. Fossils from unknown or questionable sources have limited utility because you will not know the environmental context from which they came.
3. Examine each fossil carefully using your magnifying lens or a dissecting microscope while taking notes, recording observations and sketching physical details in your notebook.
4. Use your field guides to determine the taxonomic identification and scientific classification of the fossil including its kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.
5. If you cannot take your fossil classification all the way to the species level, begin with kingdom and work your way down the taxonomic hierarchy as far as you can go.
6. Use your field guides and textbooks to label your sketches in your notebook. Become familiar with the anatomical parts of your fossil and compare them to other fossils in the field, in your field guides and in your textbooks.
7. Study the geologic map for the area where you found your fossil and try to determine the formation name and geologic period for the rock outcrop or geologic deposit.
8. Find the formation name or geologic period on a geologic time scale chart or in your paleontology textbook and make notes of these as well as the approximate age of the fossil in your notebook.
9. Decide what was the original composition of your fossil such as bone, shell, wood, leaf or if it is a trace fossil such as a footprint or burrow. Record these observations in your notebook.
10. Determine your fossil's mineral composition and whether or not some type of mineral alteration has occurred such as silicification (replacement by quartz) or opalization in which spaces become filled by the mineral opal as in petrified wood and in dinosaur bones.
11. Carefully study the outcrop or formation from which your fossil was obtained. List in your notebook relative quantities of various fossils in the outcrop. Make notes of other fossil species you find in association with your fossil.
12. Based upon your observations and research, try to determine the paleoecology and paleoenvironment in which your fossil organism once lived. For example, a fossil found in coal may have come from an ancient swamp or wetlands environment. A fossil coral may have come from a near shore reef environment. Record your observations and hypotheses in your notebook.
13. Write up a final paragraph in your notebook summarizing your fossil's analysis based upon your observations and research. Refer back to your analysis when studying other fossils from the same outcrop or when comparing similar fossils from other formations.
Tags: your fossil, your notebook, field guides, fossils from, other fossils, your field
