For example plant,
animal, ammonite, nautilus, amber, coral, fish, whale, dinosaur and
dinosaur egg fossils.
Plant
Fossils
There are many different types of plant
fossils
such as algae, lycopods, horsetails, ferns and seed ferns, petrified
wood and more developed plants such as conifers and angiosperms. The
first land plants developed during the Ordovician
Period while lycopods
date back to the Devonian.
Other important steps were the development
of vascular plants and flowering plants.
Animal
Fossils
The vast majority of animal
fossils
are those of small marine animals such as worms, foraminifera,
graptolites, bryozoans, sponges, corals, trilobites, chelicerates,
bivalves, chitons, scaphopods, brachiopods, gastropods, ammonoids,
nautiloids, crinoids, echinoids, belemnoids and crustacians. Others
include insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
Ammonite
Fossil
Ammonoids
were a type of
cephalopods that evolved from nautiloids but have by now gone extinct.
Both are some of the most developed molluscs that have internal
chambers in their shells which enable them to control their buoyancy.
Their fossils can often be found in rocks that date back to Mesozoic
and late Paleozoic eras.
Nautilus
Fossil
Nautilus
is the only genus of nautiloids that has survived until today. The
first nautiloids evolved during the Ordovician Period. They are
carnivores and good swimmers. They are similar to ammonoids, but can be
distinguished from them by their suture patterns, which are either
straight or curving only gently.
Amber
Fossil
Amber
is the fossil of ancient coniferous trees (which have gone extinct). It
often contains fossils of insects, spiders or small vertebrates which
have got trapped in the sticky substance at the time when the amber
formed. It can be transparent or transculent and it can be found in
sedimentary
rocks.
Some of the most famous deposits are found around
the Baltic Sea.
Fossil
Coral
Corals
first evolved in the Ordovician Period. They are anemone like animals
which build calcareous skeletons and form colonies. If they don't
fossilise, they form limestones.
The ones that happen to fossilise can
be hard to distinguish from actual corals because their similar look
and feel. They can also be mistaken for fossils of sponges, algae or
bryzoans. Corals are mainly found in tube-like or tree-like fossils.
Fish
Fossils
Fish fossils
are the earliest fossils of vertebrates. Fish were the first animals to
form bone, vertebrate and the substance that forms teeth. The earliest
fish - the jawless fish, first evolved during the Silurian
and Devonian
Periods. Fish fossils are common and can come as teeth, bones or entire
skeletons. Many fish fossils are preserved when they are buried under
volcanic ash.
Whale
Fossil
Whale fossils
are much, much less common fossil types as should be expected. While
the first mammals evolved during the Cretaceous
Period, mammals (which
whales
are) only started widely spread after the extinction
of
dinosaurs 65mya. Being marine mammals, however, they are more
likely to
fossilise than land mammals, because of the conditions which favour
fossilisation.
Dinosaur
Fossils
Dinosaur fossils
are fairly common fossil types. They were the dominant animals during
the whole Mesozoic Era - during the Triassic,
Jurassic
and Cretaceous
Periods. They can be anything from fossilised dinosaur tracks to teeth,
bones, or almost entire skeletons. While some have been found on all
continents, a famous deposit is the Dinosaur Quarry, in the western US.
Dinosaur
Egg Fossils
Dinosaur egg fossils
are very, very rare fossil types. Some of the more famous ones have
been found in France, South Africa and China.
Most often they are
trace fossils, which means that only the outside of the eggs has been
preserved and embryos have not been preserved.
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