The term fossil refers to the remains of any prehistoric life-form, especially those preserved in rock before the end of the last ice age. The process by which a once-living thing becomes a fossil is known as fossilization. Generally, fossilization refers to changes in the hard portions, including bones, teeth, shells, and so on. This series of changes, in which minerals are replaced by different minerals, is known as mineralization. Sometimes, soft parts may experience mineralization and thus be preserved as fossils. A deceased organism in the process of becoming a fossil is known as a subfossil.
The majority of fossils come from invertebrates, such as mussels, that possess hard parts. Generally speaking, the older and smaller the organism, the more likely it is to have experienced fossilization, though other factors (which we will discuss later) also play a part. One of the most important factors involves location: for the most part, the lower the altitude, the greater the likelihood that a region will contain fossils. The best place of all is in the ocean, particularly the ocean floor. Nonetheless, fossils have been found on every continent of Earth, and the great distances that sometimes separate samples of the same species have aided earth scientists of many fields in understanding the processes that shaped our planet.
The earth beneath our feet is not standing still; rather, it is constantly moving, and over the great stretches of geologic time, the positions of the continents have shifted considerably. The details of these shifts are discussed in Plate Tectonics, an area of geologic study that explains much about the earth, from earthquakes and volcanoes to continental drift.
Paleontology has contributed to the study of plate tectonics by revealing apparent anomalies, such as fossilized dinosaur parts in Antarctica. No dinosaur could have lived on that forbidding continent, so there must be some other explanation: the continental plates themselves have moved. Long ago, the present continents were united in a "supercontinent" called Pangaea. When Pangaea split apart to form the present continents, the remains of various species were separated from one another and from the latitudes to which they were accustomed in life.
Fossilized remains of single-cell organisms have been found in rock samples as old as 3.5 Ga, and animal fossils have been located in rocks that date to the latter part of Precambrian time, as old as 1 Ga. Just as paleontologists have benefited from studies in chronostratigraphy and geochronometry, realms of stratigraphy concerned with the dating of rock samples, stratigraphers and other geologists have used fossil samples to date the rock strata in which they were found. Not all fossilized life-forms are equally suited to this purpose. Certain ones, known as index fossils or indicator species, have been associated strongly with particular intervals of geologic time. An example is the ammonoid, a mollusk that proliferated for about 350 Ma from the late Devonian to the early Cretaceous before experiencing mass extinction.
Everything that is living eventually dies, but not nearly all living things will become fossils. And even if they do, there are numerous reasons why fossils might not be preserved in such a way as to provide meaningful evidence for a paleontologist many millions of years later. In the potential pool of candidates for fossilization, as we have noted, organisms without hard structural portions are unlikely to become fossilized. Fossilization of soft-bodied creatures sometimes occurs, however, as, for instance, at Burgess Shale in British Columbia, where environmental conditions made possible the preservation of a wide range of samples.
Furthermore, location is a powerful factor. Sedimentary rock, formed by compression and deposition (i.e., formation of deposits) on the part of other rock and mineral particles, provides the setting for many fossils. Best of all is sediment, such as sand or mud, that has not yet consolidated into harder sandstone, limestone, or other rocks. Organisms that die in upland locations are more likely to be disturbed either by wind or by scavengers, creatures that feed on the remains of living things. On the other hand, an organism at the bottom of an ocean is out of reach from most scavengers. Even at lesser depths, if the organism is in a calm, relatively scavenger-free marine environment, there is a good chance that it will be preserved.
Assuming that all the conditions are right and the dead organism is capable of undergoing fossilization, it will experience mineralization of one type or another. Living things already contain minerals, which is the reason why people take mineral supplements to augment the substances nature has placed in their bodies to preserve and extend life. In the mineralization of a fossil, the minerals in the organism's body may be replaced by other ones, or other minerals may be added to existing ones. It is also possible that both the hard and soft parts will dissolve and be replaced by a mineral cement that forms a mold that preserves the shape of the organism.
Only about 30% of species are ever fossilized, a fact that scientists must take into account, because it could skew their reading of the paleontologic record. If a paleontologist judges the past only from the fossils that have been found in an area, it will result in a picture of a past environment that contained only certain species, when, in fact, others were present. Furthermore, there are many factors that contribute to the loss of fossils. For instance, if the area has been subjected to violent tectonic activity, it is likely that the sample will be destroyed partially or wholly.
The removal of a fossil from its home in the rock is a painstaking process akin to restoring a valuable piece of art. Before removing it, the paleontologist photographs the fossil and surrounding strata and records details about the environment. Only when these steps have been taken is the fossil removed. This is done with a rock saw, which is used to cut out carefully a large area surrounding the fossil. The sample is then jacketed, or wrapped in muslin with an additional layer of wet plaster, and taken to a laboratory for study.
Fossil research can reveal a great deal about the history of life on Earth, including the relationships between species or between species and their habitats. Studies of dinosaur bones have brought to light proteins that existed in the bodies of these long-gone creatures, while research on certain oxygen isotopes has aided attempts to discover whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded creatures. Thanks to advances in the understanding of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which provides the genetic codes for all living things, it may be possible to make even more detailed studies in the future.
The remains of dinosaurs, of course, have an importance aside from their significance to paleontology. The bodies of these giant lizards have been deposited in the earth, where over time they became coal, peat, petroleum, and other fossil fuels. The latter are discussed in Economic Geology, but the fact that the dinosaurs disappeared at all is of particular interest to paleontology. Why are there no dinosaurs roaming the earth today? The answer appears to be that they were wiped out in a dramatic event, perhaps brought about as the result of a meteorite impact.
Numerous species have become extinct, typically as a result of their inability to adapt to changes in their natural environment. More recently, some extinctions or endangerments of species have been attributed to human activities, including hunting and the disruption of natural habitats. For the most part, however, extinction is simply a part of Earth's history, a result of the fact that nature has a way of destroying organisms that do not adapt (the "survival of the fittest"). But there have been occasions in the course of the planet's past in which vast numbers of individuals and species perished at once. A natural catastrophe may destroy a large population of individuals within a locality, a phenomenon known as mass mortality. Or mass mortality may take place on a global scale, destroying many species, in which case it is known as mass extinction.
The Bible depicts an example of near mass extinction, in the form of Noah's flood, and, indeed, several instances of mass extinction have resulted from sudden and dramatic changes in ocean levels. Others have been caused by tectonic events, most notably vast volcanic eruptions that filled the atmosphere with so much dust that they caused a violent change in temperature. Scientific speculation concerning other such extinctions has pointed to events in or from space—either the explosion of a star or the impact of a meteorite on Earth—as the cause of atmospheric changes and hence mass extinction.
Even though scientists have a reasonable idea of the immediate causes of mass extinction in some cases, their understanding of the ultimate or root causes is still limited. This fact was expressed by the University of Chicago paleobiologist David M. Raup, who wrote: "The disturbing reality is that for none of the thousands of well-documented extinctions in the geologic past do we have a solid explanation of why the extinction occurred."
The five largest known mass extinctions occurred at intervals of 50 Ma to 100 Ma over a span of time from about 435 to 65 million years ago. Most occurred at the end of a period, which is no accident, since geologists have used mass extinction as a factor in determining the parameters of a specific period.
In the late Ordovician period, about 435 Ma ago, a drop in the ocean level wiped out one-fourth of all marine families. Similarly, changes in sea level, along with climate changes, appear to have caused the destruction of one-fifth of existing marine families during the late Devonian period (about 357 Ma ago). Worst of all was the "great dying," as the extinction at the end of the Permian period (about 250 Ma) is known. Perhaps caused by a volcanic eruption in Siberia, it eliminated a staggering 96% of all species over a period of about a million years.
During the late Triassic period, about 198 million years ago, another catastrophe eliminated a quarter of marine families. Paleontologists know this, as they know about other mass extinctions, by the inordinate numbers of fossilized samples found in rock strata dating to that period. This reliance on the fossil record is also reflected in the fact that the scope of early mass extinctions usually is expressed in terms of marine life. As we have seen, the ocean environment provides the most reliable fossil record. Creatures died on land as well, but the terrestrial record is simply less reliable or less complete.
Scientific disagreement over the late-Triassic mass extinction exemplifies the fact that our knowledge of these distant events is not firmly established, but rather is subject to much scientific conjecture and dispute. (This does not mean that just any old idea can compete on an equal footing: we are talking here about differences of opinion among highly trained specialists.) At any rate, some scientists refer to the late-Triassic mass extinction as being one of the less exciting or eventful mass extinctions. Of course, it is hard to see how a mass extinction could be unexciting or uneventful, but they mean this in comparative terms; on the other hand, some paleontologists maintain that the late-Triassic was among the most devastating.
As to the cause, some theorists point to a group of impact sites spread across Canada, the northern United States, and Ukraine, places that would have been more or less contiguous at the time of the mass extinction. Difficulties in analyzing the "signatures" left by the projectiles that made these impressions have prevented theorists from saying with any degree of certainty whether it was a comet or an asteroid that caused the impact. Others, in particular a team from the University of California at Berkeley led by geologist Paul R. Renne, cite a volcanic eruption as either the cause of the mass extinction, or at least a major abetting factor to an extinction already in progress. According to Renne and his team, basalt outcroppings scattered from New Jersey to Brazil to west Africa (again, areas that would have been contiguous then) suggest that a volcanic eruption of almost inconceivable magnitude occurred about 200 million years ago. Such an eruption would surely have destroyed vast quantities of living things.
The last and best known mass extinction occurred about 65 million years ago, marking the end of the Cretaceous period—and the end of the dinosaurs. As to what happened, paleontologists and other scientists have proposed a number of theories: a rapid climate change; the emergence of new poisonous botanical species, eaten by herbivorous dinosaurs, that resulted in the passing of toxins along the food web (see Ecosystems); an inability to compete successfully with the rapidly evolving mammals; and even an epidemic disease to which the dinosaurs possessed no immunity.
Interesting as many of these theories are, none has gained anything like the widespread acceptance achieved by another scenario. According to this highly credible theory, an asteroid hit Earth, hurtling vast quantities of debris into the atmosphere, blocking out the sunlight, and greatly lowering Earth's surface temperature. Around the world, geologists have found traces of iridium deposited at a layer equivalent to the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, the Tertiary being the beginning of the present Cenozoic era. This is significant, because iridium seldom appears on Earth's surface—but it is found in asteroids.
There have been much more recent, if less dramatic, examples of mass extinction, including those caused by the most highly developed of all life-forms: humans. Among these examples are the well-documented (and very recent) mass extinctions brought on by destruction of tropical rainforests. Such activities are killing off a vast array of organisms: according to the highly respected Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, some 17,500 species are disappearing each year. But cases of mass extinction are not limited to modern times.
When prehistoric hunters (the ancestors of today's Native Americans) crossed the Bering land bridge from Siberia to Alaska some 12,000 years ago, they found an array of species unknown in the Americas today. These species included mammoths and mastodons; giant bears, beaver, and bison; and even saber-toothed tigers, camels, and lions. Perhaps most remarkable of all, it appears that prehistoric America was once home to a creature that would prove to be of enormous benefit to humans until the beginning of the automotive age: the horse. Horses did not reappear in the Americas until Europeans arrived to conquer those lands after A.D. 1500.
One of the most significant scientific debates of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, not only in paleontology but in the earth sciences or even science itself, is the question of whether or not the dinosaurs were warm-blooded. In other words, were they like modern reptiles, which must adjust their temperature by moving into the sunlight when they are cold, and into the shade when they are too hot? Or were they more like modern birds and mammals, whose bodies generate their own heat?
A warm-blooded animal always has a more or less constant body temperature, regardless of the temperature of its environment. This is due to the fact that it produces heat by the burning of food, as well as by physical activity, and stores that heat under a layer of fat just beneath the skin. Warm-blooded animals are also capable of cooling down their bodies by perspiring and panting. Birds and mammals are the only warm-blooded animals; all others are cold-blooded. A cold-blooded creature, on the other hand, lacks control over its body temperature and therefore is warm when its environment is warm, and cold when its environment is cold.
The difference between warm-and cold-blooded animals is partly one of metabolic rate, or the rate at which nutrients are broken down and converted into energy. Cold-blooded creatures have slow metabolic rates; think of a python that swallows a medium-sized mammal whole and takes several days to digest it. The dinosaur debate is therefore often framed as a question of whether the dinosaurs' bodies had a relatively high or relatively low metabolic rate.
Until the 1960s, there was no debate: dinosaurs, whose existence had been known for about a century, were assumed to be big, dumb, slow, cold-blooded creatures. Then, in 1968, Robert T. Bakker—an undergraduate at Yale University, not a professor or a full-fledged paleontologist—revolutionized the world of paleontology with a paper called "The Superiority of Dinosaurs."
In his article, Bakker described dinosaurs as "fast, agile, energetic creatures" whose physiology was so advanced that even the biggest and heaviest of them could outrun a human. Just a year later, John H. Ostrom, a professor of paleontology who also happened to be at Yale, wrote that a recently identified species of theropod dinosaur must have been "an active and very agile predator."
Thus began the great dinosaur debate, which rages even today. Jurassic Park reinforced the Bakker-Ostrom position, portraying Velociraptor as a cunning, fast-moving predator with clear links to birds. And indeed there are many arguments for endothermy (warm-bloodedness) in dinosaurs—arguments that relate to everything from brain size to rate of growth to the latitudes at which dinosaur fossils have been located. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence for ectothermy (cold-bloodedness), based on the dinosaurs' size, scaliness, the climate in the Mesozoic era, and so on.
To explore, compare, and judge these many arguments, the reader is encouraged to consult the "Were Dinosaurs Warm-Blooded?" Web site listed in the "Where to Learn More" section at the conclusion of this essay. However, a word of warning, as noted on that site: "The issue is a tangled, complex one. There are not just two sides to the issue; there are numerous competing hypotheses. If you're looking for a major controversy in science, look no further!"
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K-12: Paleontology: Dinos (Web site). <http://www.ceismc.gatech.edu/busyt/paleo.html> .
Morris, S. Conway. The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Munro, Margaret, and Karen Reczuch. The Story of Life on Earth. Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2000.
Oceans of Kansas Paleontology (Web site). <http://www.oceansofkansas.com/> .
Paleontology and Fossils Resources—University of Arizona Library, Tucson (Web site). <http://www.library.arizona.edu/users/mount/paleont.html> .
Palmer, Douglas. Atlas of the Prehistoric World. Bethesda, MD: Discovery Communications, 1999.
Sanders, Robert. "New Evidence Links Mass Extinction with Massive Eruptions That Split Pangea Supercontinent and Created the Atlantic 200 Million Years Ago." University of California, Berkeley. (Web site). <http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/4-22-1999b.html> .
Singer, Ronald. Encyclopedia of Paleontology. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999.
University of California, Berkeley Museum of Paleontology (Web site). <http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/> .
USGS (United States Geological Survey) Paleontology Home Page (Web site). <http://geology.er.usgs.gov/paleo/> .
"Were Dinosaurs Warm-Blooded?" (Web site). <http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dinosaurs/warmblood.html> .
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