Outdoors
How to find fossils
Sometimes a rock’s just a rock … and sometimes it’s a fossil. How can you tell the difference?
Research which fossils are common where you’ll be hiking.
Stop by a museum or visitor center, call a local university’s geology department or search for a club of paleontologists (people who study fossils of plants and animals).
Find the right kind of rocks.
Fossils are found in sedimentary rocks, like sandstone, limestone or shale. Sedimentary rocks look like layered pancakes.
Look for exposed rock.
Check out stream cuts, bluffs, sea cliffs, road cuts or any place where bedrock is eroding.
Get low.
You’ll see more fossils when you’re on your hands and knees. Use a magnifying lens. Form a “search image” in your mind. If you spotted ammonites at a nearby rock shop, think about what they looked like. Search for spirals and snail shapes. And remember that most fossils are small sea animals - not rare dinosaur bones.
Leave fossils as you found them, so others can enjoy them, unless directed otherwise by local authorities. If you think you’ve found something unusual, make a careful note of its exact location - information that’s as important as the rock itself. A fossil’s location tells its story, where and how the animal lived.
FIVE EASY-TO-FIND FOSSILS;
Here are five fossils that you can look for on your next hike.
Ammonoids: People in the Middle Ages called ammonoids “snake stones” because they thought the fossils were coiled snakes.
Brachiopods: Scientists say most brachiopods disappeared 250 million years ago, when as much as 95 percent of ocean animals died in a mass extinction.
Corals: Algae lives inside the coral, giving it nutrients and oxygen.
Crinoids:
This flower-shaped animal’s anus was next to its mouth.
Trilobites:
Growing trilobites crawled out of old exoskeletons through head splits, giving their fossils “facial structures.”
Read 61 comments about “How to find fossils”
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Comment page: « 7 6 5 4 [3] 2 1 »
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:36 am
I think that the fossils are very cool on the pictures that they show them here. I have seen a fossil before they were very cool the fossil that I saw was a rat it was killed but we just left it alone and let it do it’s stages that it needs to do before it turne’s into fossil fuel. I do not know why I like them so much but thatb is just the way I am.
I wonder what food they ate before they died.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
ok that is sooo cool i want to hold one and get dirty
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
How do you find fossils in the city?
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Rocks? HO YA I LOVE ROCKS!!!!!
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
im a new cub scout and i like to play basketball and go to the beach where there are lots of fossils and schells to collect from the ocean. i have a kewl collection so far.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
i think it would be cool to go out and just see a fossil by a stream or somethin
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
hi my name is bobby and i think rocks are cool
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
cool
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I always find tons of fossils, but usually they are worthless.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
there is this place that is cool that is somewhere in africa.