Why is amber called a fossil?
We tend to think that a fossil is an old bone. Vast rooms in museums are filled with fossil skelrtons of giant dinosaurs and other animals that once walked the earth. But a slab of rock may also be a fossil, and we burn fossil material in our grates. A lump of glassy amber is also a fossil. The word fossil is coined from an older word meaning to dig. As a rule, a fossil is dug up from the ground. Where it has been buried a long, long time. It may be made from stone. However, it is different from the rocky minerals of the earth’s crust in one important respect. A fossil was formed by some plant or animal that once lived. Coal is a fossil substance, because it was formed from ancient forests. It is the carbonized remains of once living plants. Limestone is a fossil rock in which the fossil shells of tiny sea dwellers are cemented in a solid mass. The pores in a fossil dinosaur bone may be filled with ordinary minerals of the earth’s crust. Petrified wood is a fossil in which the plant ce
