Curiosities

Sat, 2016-11-19

Paleontologists use fossils to try to figure out three main things about fossils: Identity and origin of the fossil, the fossil’s environment, and what the fossil can tell us about the history of the earth.

Sat, 2016-11-19

People have been very interested in fossil bones for a very long time. The ancient Chinese thought fossil bones were the bones of magical dragons.

Sat, 2016-11-19

Paleontology is the science dealing with the fossils of long-deceased animals and plants that lived up to billions of years ago. It’s an interdisciplinary field involving geology, archaeology, chemistry, biology, archaeology and...

Sat, 2016-11-19

A group of paleontologists visited the northern Arizona wilderness site nicknamed a “dinosaur dance floor” and concluded there were no dinosaur tracks there, only a dense collection of unusual potholes eroded in the sandstone....

Sat, 2016-11-19

According to the University of California Museum of Paleontology website, “Paleontology is a rich field, imbued with a long and interesting past and an even more intriguing and hopeful future. Many people think paleontology is the study...

Sat, 2016-11-19

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction, was a mass extinction of some three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth that occurred over a geologically...

Sat, 2016-11-19

The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that Earth’s surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen at least once, sometime earlier than 650 Mya (million years ago).

Sat, 2016-11-19

A flood basalt is the result of a giant volcanic eruption or series of eruptions that coats large stretches of land or the ocean floor with basalt lava.

Sat, 2016-11-19

The evolutionary history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms have evolved since life appeared on the planet, until the present day.

Sat, 2016-11-19

Fossils are evidence of ancient life forms or ancient habitats which have been preserved by natural processes.

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