Exactly how are fossils formed?
Fossils are the remains and reminders of plants and animals that lived long ago. There are dozens of different kinds of fossils, and the earth has dozens of different recipes for preservirig them. Some are perfect copies of the original life forms, and some are so changed that only an expert can recognize them. The experts who study fossils are paleontologists. They search for their specimens on the surface and deep in the rocky layers of the earth’s crust, on land and on the muddy floors of the deep oceans. A fossil may be the fragile body of a tiny ant, perfectly preserved in a gob of golden amber. It may be the hairy body of a monster mammoth frozen in the ice of a polar glacier. It may be the footprint of an ancient salamander or the impression of a ferny frond that flourished perhaps 100 million years ago. The formation of a fossil was started by a living plant or animal in the dim distant past. All living things use foods to carry on the magic processes of life. The earth’s simpl
