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”
Comment page: « 7 [6] 5 4 3 2 1 »
Comment page: « 7 [6] 5 4 3 2 1 »
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:13 pm
the best fossil are triceratops,t-rex,ammonites,nautiliods
January 27th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
That was a cool artical
January 26th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
This article was interesting because it teaches people a lot about fossils, where they come from, how to find them. And it is very interesting to learn about fossils too. I also like to find fossils from different types of plants that are in my drive way, now in stone form!
January 24th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I learned so much about fossils i cant wait to go out and start looking.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:43 am
how to find fossils and other interisting items are actually very easy all you have to do is start to dig with a shovel very carfully and sooner or later you’ll find somthing intresting.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:39 am
sweet fossils!!!!!
January 24th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Next time I go outside I will make sure to look for these things
January 24th, 2008 at 7:12 am
the folsels are so cool
January 24th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I have found many fossils just looking by the creek and in the pea gravel by our swingset. We find fossils by the Lake Michigan beach alot also.
The best one I have was in a rock garden at our neighbors. They had just gotten a fresh load poured from the truck and I looked down and this is my best fossil ever.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
You rock at finding good fossils.