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Fossil collecting (sometimes, in a non-scientific sense, fossil hunting) is the collection of fossils for scientific study, hobby, or profit. Fossil collecting, as practiced by amateurs, is the predecessor of modern paleontology and many still collect fossils and study fossils as amateurs. Professionals and amateurs alike collect fossils for their scientific value. See also: Zombie taxon Eroded Jurassic plesiosaur vertebral centrum found in the Lower Cretaceous Faringdon Sponge Gravels in Faringdon, England. An example of a remanié fossil.
a b Allwood, Abigail C.; Grotzinger, John P.; Knoll, Andrew H.; Burch, Ian W.; Anderson, Mark S.; Coleman, Max L.; Kanik, Isik (2009). "Controls on development and diversity of Early Archean stromatolites". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (24): 9548–9555. Bibcode: 2009PNAS..106.9548A. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903323106. PMC 2700989. PMID 19515817. The Plains tribes of North America are thought to have similarly associated fossils, such as the many intact pterosaur fossils naturally exposed in the region, with their own mythology of the thunderbird. [76] Chan, Alan Kam-leung and Gregory K. Clancey, Hui-Chieh Loy (2002). Historical Perspectives on East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine. Singapore: Singapore University Press. p. 15. ISBN 9971-69-259-7. Neuendorf, Klaus K. E.; Institute, American Geological (2005). Glossary of Geology. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-0-922152-76-6. Archived from the original on 17 March 2023 . Retrieved 7 June 2020. coprolites". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 17 December 2008 . Retrieved 29 February 2012.Herron, Scott; Freeman, Jon C. (2004). Evolutionary analysis (3rded.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. p.816. ISBN 978-0-13-101859-4. Archived from the original on 17 March 2023 . Retrieved 11 October 2018. Definition of Steinkern". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021 . Retrieved 13 May 2021. a fossil consisting of a stony mass that entered a hollow natural object (such as a bivalve shell) in the form of mud or sediment, was consolidated, and remained as a cast after dissolution of the mold Borenstein, Seth (13 November 2013). "Oldest fossil found: Meet your microbial mom". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 29 June 2015 . Retrieved 15 November 2013.
Fossils can break during the excavation process. Paul says, 'It's actually quite common. When you're taking a bone out of the ground, you aren't exactly sure where the ends of it are or where it starts going into the ground.
Science is really an activity that anyone can be involved in,” said Clint Boyd, senior paleontologist for the North Dakota Geological Survey, and the one who oversees all the public digs in the state. “It doesn’t necessarily take years of study to be of some use in a scientific field. You begin to understand, when you go to a museum and see that finished product, where it came from, and how we go from bones in the ground to bones in the museum and all the steps in between.”
In medieval China, the fossil bones of ancient mammals including Homo erectus were often mistaken for " dragon bones" and used as medicine and aphrodisiacs. In addition, some of these fossil bones are collected as "art" by scholars, who left scripts on various artifacts, indicating the time they were added to a collection. One good example is the famous scholar Huang Tingjian of the Song Dynasty during the 11th century, who kept a specific seashell fossil with his own poem engraved on it. [78] In his Dream Pool Essays published in 1088, Song dynasty Chinese scholar-official Shen Kuo hypothesized that marine fossils found in a geological stratum of mountains located hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean was evidence that a prehistoric seashore had once existed there and shifted over centuries of time. [79] [80] His observation of petrified bamboos in the dry northern climate zone of what is now Yan'an, Shaanxi province, China, led him to advance early ideas of gradual climate change due to bamboo naturally growing in wetter climate areas. [80] [81] [82] Replacement occurs when the shell, bone, or other tissue is replaced with another mineral. In some cases mineral replacement of the original shell occurs so gradually and at such fine scales that microstructural features are preserved despite the total loss of original material. A shell is said to be recrystallized when the original skeletal compounds are still present but in a different crystal form, as from aragonite to calcite. [19] Adpression (compression-impression) Niles Eldredge's study of the Phacops trilobite genus supported the hypothesis that modifications to the arrangement of the trilobite's eye lenses proceeded by fits and starts over millions of years during the Devonian. [101] Eldredge's interpretation of the Phacops fossil record was that the aftermaths of the lens changes, but not the rapidly occurring evolutionary process, were fossilized. This and other data led Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to publish their seminal paper on punctuated equilibrium in 1971. Koch, C. (1978). "Bias in the published fossil record". Paleobiology. 4 (3): 367–372. Bibcode: 1978Pbio....4..367K. doi: 10.1017/S0094837300006060. S2CID 87368101.Geologic Time: Radiometric Time Scale". U.S. Geological Survey. Archived from the original on 21 September 2008 . Retrieved 20 September 2008. Signor–Lipps effect– Sampling bias in the fossil record raising difficulties to characterize extinctions Shute, C. H.; Cleal, C. J. (1986). "Palaeobotany in museums". Geological Curator. 4 (9): 553–559. doi: 10.55468/GC865. S2CID 251638416.
Ancient Egyptians Collected Fossils". 5 September 2016. Archived from the original on 10 February 2019 . Retrieved 9 February 2019. While prokaryotic cyanobacteria themselves reproduce asexually through cell division, they were instrumental in priming the environment for the evolutionary development of more complex eukaryotic organisms. Cyanobacteria (as well as extremophile Gammaproteobacteria) are thought to be largely responsible for increasing the amount of oxygen in the primeval earth's atmosphere through their continuing photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to create their food. A layer of mucus often forms over mats of cyanobacterial cells. In modern microbial mats, debris from the surrounding habitat can become trapped within the mucus, which can be cemented by the calcium carbonate to grow thin laminations of limestone. These laminations can accrete over time, resulting in the banded pattern common to stromatolites. The domal morphology of biological stromatolites is the result of the vertical growth necessary for the continued infiltration of sunlight to the organisms for photosynthesis. Layered spherical growth structures termed oncolites are similar to stromatolites and are also known from the fossil record. Thrombolites are poorly laminated or non-laminated clotted structures formed by cyanobacteria common in the fossil record and in modern sediments. [55] From the 13th century to the present day, scholars pointed out that the fossil skulls of Deinotherium giganteum, found in Crete and Greece, might have been interpreted as being the skulls of the Cyclopes of Greek mythology, and are possibly the origin of that Greek myth. [86] [87] Their skulls appear to have a single eye-hole in the front, just like their modern elephant cousins, though in fact it's actually the opening for their trunk. She identified ammonites, gastropods, Mosasaur teeth, and even a piece of dinosaur bone. The fossil she was most fascinated with, though, was the coprolite, which—as the guide states—is “fossilized animal poop.” My child dissolved into giggles once she realized she’d found fossilized animal scat. She couldn’t wait to show it to her sisters.
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Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the Encyclopedia Americana with a Wikisource reference
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