Types of Preservation.
● Mummification: This rare form of preservation preserves life form with some tissue or
skin intact. Specimens that are preserved this way are very fragile. Natural
mummification usually happens in dry and cold places where preservation happens
quickly and effectively. Mummification is not truly fossilization.
● External Molds: These are imprints of the organism embedded in rocks.
● Casts: These are formed when external molds are filled with sediment.
● Internal molds: These occur when sediment fills the shell of a deceased organism such
as a bivalve or a gastropod. These remain after the organism's remains decompose to
show the internal features of the organism
● Petrification/Petrifaction/Silicification: These occur when minerals slowly replace the
various organic tissues of an organism. The most common mineral to cause petrification
is silicon, but other minerals also work.
● Carbonization/Coalification: These occur when over time all parts of the original
organism except the carbon are removed from the fossil over time. The remaining carbon
is the same carbon that the organism was made of.
● Recrystallization: This occurs when original minerals in the fossil over time revert into
more stable minerals, such as an apatite shell recrystallizing into the more
thermodynamically stable calcite.
● Replacement: This occurs when the hard parts of the organism are replaced with
minerals over time.
● Trace fossils: Trace fossils are fossils that are not part of the organism. These include
footprints, burrows, eggshells, and coprolite (fossilized excrement). They give insight into
an organism's behavior.
● Actual remains: These are much rarer than other fossil types. These are still intact parts
of the organism. Actual remains can be seen preserved in ice, tar, or amber. A good
example is mammoth hair, which is often frozen and still preserved.
● Tar: When organisms become trapped in tar, due to the oxygen deprived environment, it
allows for the rapid burial of body parts which are well preserved. A good example is the
La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles.
Found mostly in bodies of water. (Areas where they won't be disturbed).
Water can't be too deep (needs to be pushed to the surface as opposed to being dragged down.
Types of rocks:
● Sandstones/Siltstones. Preserve: Water ripples, tracks, petrified wood, dinosaur bones,
hard shelled-invertebrates,
● Conglomerate. Preserve: Fossilized bones and teeth, amphibians, reptiles.
● Shale. MOST COMMON Preserve: Vertebrate, invertebrate, plants. Perfectly preserved.
● Limestone. Also very fossiliferous. Preserve: Shallow + Deep Tropical seas,
invertebrates, armored fish, shark teeth.
● Coal/Coal Shales. Preserve: Plants, fish, insects, marine invertebrates, dinosaur
footprints.
Geologic Time Zones
● Cambrian - Invertebrates
● Ordovician - Fish + Trilobites
● Silurian - Early Land Animals
● Devonian - Forests + Amphibians
○ Mucrospirifer (Brachiopod) + Phacops (Trilobit)
● Carboniferous
○ Mississippian - Shallow Seas
○ Pennsylvanian - Coal-Bearing Rocks
● Permian - Gymnosperms
● Triassic - Dinosaurs + Early Mammals
● Jurassic - Birds
● Cretaceous - Flowering Plants
● Paleogene - Apes
● Neogene - Mammals + Birds evolve - Hominids
● Quaternary - Humans (CURRENT)
● Pelagic: Free swimming, e.g. fish or scallops (scallops "swim" by flapping their shells)
● Sessile: Rooted to the floor, e.g. crinoids (sea lilies) and sea anemones.
● Benthic: Lives on the seafloor, e.g. crabs, lobsters, crinoids.
● Vagrant: Free swimming, same as pelagic.
● Motile: The opposite of sessile; moves around. Examples include anything that is
Pelagic/Vagrant, Benthic, or any other organism able to move around.
● Coiled: The outsides of an organism coil around a center point.
● Planktonic: Does not actually swim; floats and is carried along with the ocean's currents.
Relative Dating
Relative dating orders events in chronological order. It tells which events came first, but it does not
specify the exact date of which it occurred. There are different methods that are used for relative
dating: the principle of superposition, the principle of original horizontality, the principle of
cross-cutting relationships, and the principle of inclusions.
● Principle of Superposition: If there are undisturbed layers of sedimentary rocks, then
the layers will be younger as they near the top. The oldest layers are on the bottom and
the youngest layers are on the top.
● Principle of Original Horizontality: Rocks are originally layered horizontally. If there are
layers that are higher on one side than on the other, it is due to the tilting of rocks caused
by a geological event.
● Principle of Cross-Cutting Relationships: This principle states that a fracture or cut in
a rock caused by another rock (igneous intrusion) is always younger than the rock it cuts.
● Principle of Inclusions: Fragments of one rock in another rock must be older than the
rock it is contained in.
Major Radioactive Isotopes and Half-Lives
Isotope Half-Life
Carbon 14 5730
years
Potassium 40 1.25 Ga
Uranium 235 703.8 Ma
Uranium 238 4.468 Ga
Thorium 232 14.05 Ga
Rubidium 87 48.8 Ga
Samarium 147 106 Ga
