Because of the conditions necessary for their preservation, not all types of organisms that existed in the past have left fossils that can be retrieved.
Fossil
- The word fossil comes from the Latin word fossus, meaning "having been dug up" because many fossils are found in rock layers deep in the Earth. Fossils are any remains or traces of past organisms that have been preserved by nature.
- A fossil can preserve an entire organism or just part of one. Bones, shells, feathers, and leaves are just some of the things that can become fossils. Fossils can be very large like dinosaurs or even microscopically small like bacteria.
- Preserved remains can only become fossils if they reach an age of about 10,000 years. The fossilized teeth of wooly mammoths are some of our most "recent" fossils and date back to approximately 300,000 years ago. Some of the oldest fossils are those of ancient algae that lived in the ocean more than 3 billion years ago.
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- Fossils are the preserved remains of a living thing over 10,000 years old.