FOSSILS AND GEOLOGICAL TIME

Stoenescu Radu-Alexandru
 Fossils are the recognizable remains, such as bones, shells, or leaves, or other evidence,
such as tracks, burrows, or impressions, of past life on Earth. Scientists who study fossils are called
paleontologists. A paleontologist studies ancient forms of life. Fossils are fundamental to the
geologic time scale. The names of most of the eons and eras end in zoic, because these time
intervals are often recognized on the basis of animal life. Rocks formed during the Proterozoic
Eon may have fossils of relative simple organisms, such as bacteria, algae, and wormlike animals.
Rocks formed during the Phanerozoic Eon may have fossils of complex animals and plants such
as dinosaurs, mammals, and trees.

FOSSILS

Fossils are evidence of preexisting organisms, either plant or animal. The most common
and obvious fossils are the preserved skeletal remains of animals. Other fossils, which are also
evidence of past organisms, include leaf impressions, tracks and trails, burrows, droppings, and
root casts.
Microfossils are the microscopic skeletons of previously existing plants or animals, and
their examination requires an optical or an electron microscope for close study. A very small
fraction of the organisms that have lived on the Earth is found in the fossil record: Many did not
possess skeletons or other hard parts that could be preserved; many did not survive the process of
fossilization, wherein skeletons and tissues are replaced by minerals; and many were subsequently
destroyed either by chemical or physical processes such as recrystallization, metamorphism, or
erosion.
Fossils of any kind are useful in "reading the rock record," meaning they help us decipher
the history of the earth. They can help determine the geologic age and environment (the
paleoenvironment) in which they were deposited. Finally, and if the fossil record is complete
enough, their study can help for a better understanding of the evolution (or progression) of life
through geologic time.
Understanding of the fossils meaning is based on the accumulated knowledge from
previous generations of investigators who carefully recorded the identity and distribution of fossils
from numerous geologic exposures or samples from wells and recorded their findings in the
scientific literature. When the regional or global distribution of fossils through geologic time is
taken into consideration, we can gain important insights into such phenomena as continental drift,
community migration, and climatic (paleoclimatic) reconstruction.
Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary
significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The
oldest fossils are from around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. The observation in the
19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led to the recognition of a
geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric
dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitatively measure the absolute
ages of rocks and the fossils they host.
  Permineralization

Fig1. Permineralized Triobit

Permineralization is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried. The

empty spaces within an organism (spaces filled with liquid or gas during life) become filled with
mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty
spaces. This process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell.
Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils. For permineralization to occur,
the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death or soon after the initial decay
process. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details
of the fossil. Some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth; other fossils contain traces of
skin, feathers or even soft tissues. This is a form of diagenesis.
  Casts and molds

Fig.2 Trilobite Mold

In some cases the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise
destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an external mold. If this hole
is later filled with other minerals, it is a cast. An endocast or internal mold is formed when
sediments or minerals fill the internal cavity of an organism, such as the inside of a bivalve or snail
or the hollow of a skull.

 Authigenic mineralization
This is a special form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism (or
fragment of organism) can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite,
resulting in a nodule forming around it. If this happens rapidly before significant decay to the
organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved. Nodules from
the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, USA, are among the best documented.
  Replacement and recrystallization.

Fig.3 Recrystallization of ammonite shell in yellow calcite

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.
  Adpression (compression-impression)

Fig.4 Impression/Compression of conifer seed cones

Compression fossils, such as those of fossil ferns, are the result of chemical reduction of the
complex organic molecules composing the organism's tissues. In this case the fossil consists of
original material, albeit in a geochemically altered state. This chemical change is an expression of
diagenesis. Often what remains is a carbonaceous film known as a phytoleim, in which case the
fossil is known as a compression. Often, however, the phytoleim is lost and all that remains is an
impression of the organism in the rock—an impression fossil. In many cases, however,
compressions and impressions occur together. For instance, when the rock is broken open, the
phytoleim will often be attached to one part (compression), whereas the counterpart will just be an
impression. For this reason, one term covers the two modes of preservation: adpression.
  Soft tissue, cell and molecular preservation

Fig5. Reptile soft tissure fossil

Because of their antiquity, an unexpected exception to the alteration of an organism's tissues

by chemical reduction of the complex organic molecules during fossilization has been the
discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, including blood vessels, and the isolation of proteins
and evidence for DNA fragments. In 2014, Mary Schweitzer and her colleagues reported the
presence of iron particles (goethite-aFeO(OH)) associated with soft tissues recovered from
dinosaur fossils. Based on various experiments that studied the interaction of iron in haemoglobin
with blood vessel tissue they proposed that solution hypoxia coupled with iron chelation enhances
the stability and preservation of soft tissue and provides the basis for an explanation for the
unforeseen preservation of fossil soft tissues. However, a slightly older study based on eight taxa
ranging in time from the Devonian to the Jurassic found that reasonably well-preserved fibrils that
probably represent collagen were preserved in all these fossils, and that the quality of preservation
depended mostly on the arrangement of the collagen fibers, with tight packing favoring good
preservation. There seemed to be no correlation between geological age and quality of
preservation, within that timeframe.
  Carbonization

Fig. 6 Carbonized insects

Carbonaceous films are thin coatings which consist predominantly of the chemical element
carbon. The soft tissues of organisms are made largely of organic carbon compounds and during
diagenesis under reducing conditions only a thin film of carbon residue is left which forms a
silhouette of the original organism.

 Bioimmuration

Fig7.Soft-bodied organism preserved by bioimmuration in the bryozoan skeleton

 Bioimmuration occurs when a skeletal organism overgrows or otherwise subsumes another
organism, preserving the latter, or an impression of it, within the skeleton.Usually it is a sessile
skeletal organism, such as a bryozoan or an oyster, which grows along a substrate, covering other
sessile sclerobionts. Sometimes the bioimmured organism is soft-bodied and is then preserved in
negative relief as a kind of external mold. There are also cases where an organism settles on top
of a living skeletal organism that grows upwards, preserving the settler in its skeleton.
Bioimmuration is known in the fossil record from the Ordovician to the Recent.

Geological Time

Fig. 8 Geologic Time scale

The geologic time scale is a “calendar” for events in Earth history. It subdivides all time
into named units of abstract time called eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages. The enumeration of
those geologic time units is based on stratigraphy, which is the correlation and classification of
rock strata. The fossil that occur in the rocks establish a geologic time scale

The following four timelines show the geologic time scale. The first shows the entire time
from the formation of the Earth to the present, but this gives little space for the most recent eon.
Therefore, the second timeline shows an expanded view of the most recent eon. In a similar way,
the most recent era is expanded in the third timeline, and the most recent period is expanded in the
fourth timeline.

Corresponding to eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages, the terms "eonothem", "erathem",
"system", "series", "stage" are used to refer to the layers of rock that belong to these stretches of
geologic time in Earth's history.

Geologists qualify these units as "early", "mid", and "late" when referring to time, and
"lower", "middle", and "upper" when referring to the corresponding rocks. For example, the lower
Jurassic Series in chronostratigraphy corresponds to the early Jurassic Epoch in geochronology.
The adjectives are capitalized when the subdivision is formally recognized, and lower case when
not; thus "early Miocene" but "Early Jurassic."
Living beings have undergone evolutionary changes over geologic time, particular kinds
of organisms are characteristic of particular parts of the geologic record. By asociating the strata
in which some types of fossils are found, the geologic history of various regions—and of Earth as
a whole—can be reproduced. The relative geologic time scale developed from the fossil record
has been numerically quantified by means of absolute dates obtained with radiometric dating
methods.
The Phanerozoic Eon represents the time during which the majority of macroscopic
organisms, algal, fungal, plant and animal, lived. When first proposed as a division of geologic
time, the beginning of the Phanerozoic (approximately 543 million years ago) was thought to
coincide with the beginning of life. In reality, this eon coincides with the appearance of animals
that evolved external skeletons, like shells, and the somewhat later animals that formed internal
skeletons, such as the bony elements of vertebrates. The time before the Phanerozoic is usually
referred to as the Precambrian, and exactly what qualifies as an "eon" or "era" varies somewhat
depending on whom you talk to. In any case, the Precambrian is usually divided into the three
"eras" shown.
The Phanerozoic also consists of three major divisions...the Cenozoic, the Mesozoic, and
the Paleozoic Eras. The "zoic" part of the word comes from the root "zoo", which means animal.
This is the same root as in the words Zoology and Zoological Park (or Zoo). "Cen" means recent,
"Meso" means middle, and "Paleo" means ancient. These divisions reflect major changes in the
composition of ancient faunas, each era being recognized by its domination by a particular group
of animals. The Cenozoic has sometimes been called the "Age of Mammals", the Mesozoic the
"Age of Dinosaurs" and the Paleozoic the "Age of Fishes". This is an overly simplified view, which
has some value for the newcomer but can be a bit misleading. For instance, other groups of animals
lived during the Mesozoic. In addition to the dinosaurs, animals such as mammals, turtles,
crocodiles, frogs, and countless varieties of insects also lived on land. Additionally, there were
many kinds of plants living in the past that no longer live today. Ancient floras went through great
changes too, and not always at the same times that the animal groups changed.
RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE TIME

When we speak about the divisions of geologic time, it is necessary to discuss the concepts
of relative and absolute time. The term relative refers to a quality or quantity that is comparative,
or dependent on something else. Its opposite is absolute, a term designating a quality or quantity
that is independent and not defined in relation to another quality or quantity.

RELATIVE DATING

Once one knows that dating, in a scientific context, usually refers to any effort directed
toward finding the age of a particular item or phenomenon. Relative dating, assigns an age relative
to that of other items.
One of the principal means of relative dating is through stratigraphy, which is based on the
assumption that the deeper a layer of rock lies beneath Earth's surface, the earlier it was deposited.
This holds true for one of the three major types of rock: sedimentary rock, which is formed by
compression and deposition (formation of deposits) on the part of rock and mineral particles. (The
other types of rock are igneous and metamorphic.)
Other relative dating techniques include seriation, faunal dating, and pollen dating, or
palynology. Used, for instance, in archaeological studies, seriation analyzes the abundance of a
particular item and assigns relative dates based on this abundance. The term faunal dating refers
to fauna, or animal life, and faunal dating is the use of animal bones to determine age. Finally,
pollen dating, or palynology, involves analysis of pollen deposits.

ABSOLUTE DATING

As dating technology has progressed, it has become increasingly possible for scientists to
provide absolute dates for specimens. One such method, introduced in the 1960s, is amino-acid
racimization. Amino acids exist in two forms, designated L-forms and D-forms, which are
stereoisomers, or mirror images of each other. Virtually all living organisms (except some
microbes) incorporate only the L-forms, but once the organism dies the L-amino acids gradually
convert to D-amino acids. Several factors influence the rate of conversion, and though amino-acid
racimization was popular in the 1970s, these uncertainties have led scientists to treat it with
increasing disfavor.
The principles that undergird amino-acid racimization, are essential to most forms of
absolute dating. Generally, absolute dating uses ratios between the quantities of a particular
substance and the quantities of a mirror substance to which it is converted over a period of time.
The greater the ratio of Substance B to Substance A, the longer the time that has elapsed. The scale
of time for various substances, however, differs greatly. Carbon-14 decay, for instance, takes place
over a few thousand years, making it useful for measuring the age of human artifacts. On the other
hand, uranium decay takes billions of years, and thus it is used for dating rocks.
Cation-ratio dating, for instance, measures the amount of cations, or positively charged
ions, that have formed on an exposed rock surface. (An ion is an atom or group of atoms that have
lost or gained electrons, thus acquiring a net electric charge. Electron loss creates a cation, as
opposed to a negatively charged anion, created when an atom or atoms gain electrons.) Cation-
ratio dating is based on the idea that the ratio of potassium and calcium cations to titanium cations
decreases with age. It is applicable only to rocks in desert areas, where the dry air stabilizes the
cation "varnish."
Chronostratigraphy is the branch of geology that studies the relative time relations and ages
of rock units. In chronostratigraphy, we are concerned with the age relations between rock bodies
irrespective of their absolute (numerical) age. Fossils provide a rapid and accurate means of
determining the relative age of rocks in a stratigraphic sequence. We cannot assign an absolute age
to the fossils until we have a time scale. Geochronology is that branch of stratigraphy concerned
with the dating and subdivision of geologic time and the establishment of time scales.
Before geologists had a means to determine the actual ages of rocks, their correlations were
based on the superposition of rock strata, that is, older rocks are deposited before younger rocks.
Geologic time was subdivided into a hierarchy of chronostratigraphic units of unknown duration.
The application of radiometric dating techniques to determine the absolute ages of rocks resulted
in the discipline of geochronology and the ability to establish geologic time scales.
There is no single location on earth that has experienced a continuous and uninterrupted
accumulation of sediments or rocks that could be dated and that could yield an ideal reference time
scale. A chronostratigraphic scale is not discovered; it is established by agreement among
numerous geologists and is based on a composite of sections. An ideal chronostratigraphic section
that would be part of a larger composite section would possess the following attributes: a sequence
of points representing essentially continuous, and preferably marine, deposition; fossils that are
abundant, distinctive, diverse, cosmopolitan, and well preserved, and without major
paleoenvironmental changes; minerals for isotopic age determinations, and a record of
geomagnetic polarity reversals. Additionally, these "type" sections would be well exposed, have
reasonably permanent accessibility, and be readily correlated to other sections.
Once a chronostratigraphic scale is agreed upon, it serves as a recognized standard and
generally stands unchanged until it is reevaluated and modified with even better stratigraphic
sections or with improved analytical instrumentation. As a result, no chronostratigraphic scale is
ever totally finalized.
A chronostratigraphic scale that is integrated with absolute ages (geochronology) is called
a geologic time scale. Nearly two dozen time scales have been proposed since Arthur Holmes
published his first one in 1913. Each scale incorporated the latest developments in standard
stratigraphic sections, biostratigraphy, and age-dating. The latest time scale, edited in 2004 by
Felix Gradstein and colleagues, incorporated high-resolution radiometric and astronomical age-
dating into a comprehensive time scale for the last 3.850 billion years (the age of the earth being
4.54 billion years).
 The primary defined divisions of time are eons, in sequence the Hadean, the Archean, the
Proterozoic and the Phanerozoic. The first three of these can be referred to collectively as the
Precambrian supereon. Eons are divided into eras, which are in turn divided into periods, epochs
and ages.
 References

 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil
 https://www.palass.org/publications/palaeontology
-journal/archive/33/1/article_pp1-17
 https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/bones/mor
e-soft-tissue-in-old-fossils/
 https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/07/07/wh
at-plant-fossils-can-tell-us-about-life-on-earth/
 http://www.geologyfortoday.com/preservation-of-
fossils.html
 http://blogs.nobl.k12.in.us/hurstes/2014/02/04/trilo
bite-fossil-mold/
 http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/157/geology-
anthology/4774/fossils-rocks-and-time/
 https://igws.indiana.edu/fossilsandtime/