Fossils. fossils

In the distant past, many of the organisms that inhabited the Earth were much larger than today's animals. There were also monstrous millipedes and giant sharks. The parade of giants was presented by BBC Earth correspondent.

The heaviest animal that has ever lived on Earth is the blue whale, whose weight exceeds 150 tons. As far as we know, no living organism in history has had a similar mass. But some creatures could boast of larger sizes.

Sarcosuchus imperial could well have eaten small dinosaurs

Dinosaurs enjoy, perhaps, undeserved attention of the public, because besides them, many other animals of enormous size lived on Earth, which we will never see in the flesh.

Some of them are gigantic ancestors of living creatures, while others did not leave offspring, and therefore seem especially amazing.

The remains of prehistoric giants can shed light on the gradual changes in living conditions on Earth, since the size of animals is often directly dependent on environment.

In addition, there is something bewitching in the extinct giants, the appearance of which we can only imagine.

We offer our readers the ten most amazing creatures that we are no longer destined to meet in wildlife.

Egirocassis (Aegirocassis benmoulae)

Aegyrocassida filtered sea water by absorbing plankton

What would the love fruit of a whale and a lobster look like? If such a creature existed in the world, it is possible that it would resemble aegyrocassis.

This prehistoric two-meter-long shrimp lived on Earth about 480 million years ago. She belonged to the now extinct genus Anomalocaris.

The animal looked like a space alien. With the help of reticulate processes on the head, it strained out plankton from sea water.

The life of Aegirocassids occurred during the period of growth in the species diversity of plankton. As a result, these animals did not compete in search of food with most other anomalocaris - carnivorous predators with sharp teeth.

It is possible that aegirocassida will help us figure out how the limbs of arthropods, represented by modern spiders, insects and crustaceans, developed.

Aegyrocassid fossil

Studying the fossilized remains of aegyrocassis, scientists came to the conclusion that it had paired blades.

Until recently, based on the findings of incompletely preserved fossils, scientists believed that anomalocaris had only one pair of flexible lateral lobes per body segment. However, analysis of the remains of aegyrocassid indicates that each segment of these creatures had two pairs of blades used for swimming.

Scientists once again studied the previously found fossils of other species of the Anomalocaris genus and came to the conclusion that they also had paired lobes. They came to the conclusion that in some species in the process of evolution there was a fusion of the lobes.

This prompted scientists to conclude that anomalocaris were prehistoric arthropods. This idea has previously been criticized due to the strange body structure of representatives of this genus.

Until 1985, paleontologists believed that the appendages on the heads of anomalocaris were shrimp, their tooth-studded mouth appendages belonged to jellyfish, and their bodies belonged to sea cucumbers.

Racoscorpion (Jaekelopterus rhenaniae)

This is what prehistoric racoscorpion probably looked like

The rakoscorpion is the most terrible nightmare of an arachnophobe (a person experiencing a pathological fear of spiders). This giant, 2.5 meters long, claims to be the largest arthropod that has ever inhabited the Earth.

AT English language the creature is known as the "sea scorpion".

This title is inaccurate. The racoscorpion was not a scorpion in the truest sense of the word, and, most likely, it was found not at the bottom of the seas, but in rivers and lakes. He lived about 390 million years ago and ate fish.

This species was first described in 2008: in a quarry near the German city of Prüm, a fossilized claw 46 cm long was found - all that was left of the animal. However, the ratio between the size of the claw and the whole body in crustaceans is very constant, so the researchers concluded that J. rhenaniae reached a length of 233 to 259 cm.

This find is further evidence that prehistoric scorpions were very large.

No one knows for certain why the crustacean scorpions grew to such gigantic sizes.

Some scientists suggest that the answer lies in the composition of the Earth's atmosphere: in some periods of the past, the level of oxygen in it was much higher than now.

Others point to a relatively small variety of vertebrate predators living then, including fish.

Arthropleura (Arthropleura)

Millipede

The modern millipede fits in the palm of your hand; now imagine the same 2.6 m long - it will be a kind of arthropleura

Another contender for the title of the largest arthropod in history is arthropleura from the genus Millipedes, which reached 2.6 m in length.

Arthropleura lived between 340 and 280 million years ago and it is possible that they owed their gigantic size to the high oxygen content in the atmosphere.

No one has yet been able to find the entire fossil Arthropleura. Skeletal fragments up to 90 cm long have been found in southwestern Germany, and traces believed to have been left by these millipedes have been found in Scotland, the United States and Canada.

Researchers believe that the body of Arthropleura consisted of about 30 segments, covered on top and sides with protective plates.

Since the fossil remains of the jaws of Arthropleura have not yet been discovered, it is difficult to say for sure what it ate.

Paleontologists who have studied the fossilized excrement of this creature have identified fern spores in them, which indicates the likelihood of the presence of plant foods in their diet.

Filmmakers took up the popularization of Arthropleura - it is mentioned in the BBC popular science series Walking with Monsters (2005) and First Life (2010).

Meganeura (Meganeura)

Imagine an insect that looks like a dragonfly, with a wingspan of 65 cm - something like this could be a meganevra

For the first time, gigantism among arthropods was associated with a high oxygen content in the atmosphere in 1880 after the discovery of the remains of a Meganeur in France.

These dragonfly-like creatures lived about 300 million years ago and fed on amphibians and insects.

Their wingspan reached 65 cm. We are talking about one of the largest types of flying insects that have ever inhabited the Earth.

Strictly speaking, Meganeuri belonged to the genus of dragonfly-like insects. From dragonflies known to us, they were distinguished by some features of the structure of the body.

Restrictions on the size of insects are imposed by the method of delivering oxygen from the air to the internal organs. The role of the lungs in them is performed by a tubular tracheal system.

During the Carboniferous period, 359-299 million years ago, the oxygen content in the air reached at least 35%. Perhaps due to this circumstance, the meganeura was able to extract more energy from the air and maintain the ability to fly even as it increased in size.

The same hypothesis explains why meganeurs did not survive more late periods when the oxygen content in the air is low.

Imperial sarcosuchus (Sarcosuchus imperator)

Sarcosuchus imperial skeleton Sarcosuchus imperial is also called the "supercrocodile"

In the process of evolution, not only insects were crushed. Paleontologists searching for dinosaur remains in Niger in 1997 were surprised to find fossilized crocodile jawbones that were as long as an adult human.

Subsequently, it turned out that scientists have found the best-preserved specimen of the imperial sarcosuchus to date - a prehistoric giant crocodile that lived in the full-flowing rivers of northern tropical Africa 110 million years ago.

The animal, which is informally called the supercrocodile, reached 12 meters in length and weighed about eight tons, that is, it was twice as long and four times as heavy as the largest living crocodiles.

It is possible that in addition to fish, Sarcosuchus also ate small dinosaurs.

Its narrow jaws reached 1.8 meters in length and were studded with more than a hundred teeth. There was a massive bone outgrowth at the tip of the upper jaw.

The eyes of the sarcosuchus moved vertically in their sockets. Apparently, this monster outwardly resembled the Ghanaian gharial living in India and Nepal, which is listed in the Red Book.

Despite its unofficial name, imperial sarcosuchus was not a direct ancestor of 23 species of modern representatives of the crocodile order. It belonged to an extinct family of reptiles called pholidosaurs.

Other equally large fossils of prehistoric crocodile reptiles have been found, including those belonging to the extinct genus Deinosuchus.

They were relatives of modern alligators and may have reached a length of 10 meters.

Crocodiles could grow to this size because they lived mainly in water, which supported their weight - on land this would not have been possible.

In addition, the crocodile skull is very strong. Accordingly, the force of compression of the jaws is also great, which allows the reptile to hunt large prey.

Metoposaurus (Metoposaurus)

The two-meter Metoposaurus had a wide flat head with a mouth studded with hundreds of teeth.

Prehistoric fish had to fear not only crocodiles. Giant carnivorous amphibians, outwardly similar to huge salamanders, were also found on Earth in ancient times.

Metoposaurus fossils have been found in Germany, Poland, North America, Africa, and India.

Metoposaurus was very distantly related to the current salamanders

Most prehistoric species disappeared from the face of the Earth about 201 million years ago. Then many vertebrates died out, including large amphibians, which gave the dinosaurs the opportunity to establish their dominance on the planet.

Metoposaurus was described in March 2005 by Stephen Brachette of the University of Edinburgh and colleagues. It was named Metoposaurus algarvensis after the Algarve region in southern Portugal where the remains were found.

The two-meter Metoposaurus had a wide flat head with a mouth studded with hundreds of teeth. Small, underdeveloped limbs indicate that he did not spend much time on land.

Metoposaurus was the progenitor of modern amphibians such as frogs and newts. Despite its appearance, Metoposaurus was very distantly related to the current salamanders.

Megatherium (Megatherium)

Megatheria are considered the ancestors of modern sloths, armadillos and anteaters.

What would a cross between a bear and an elephant-sized hamster look like? Possibly megatherium.

This extinct genus of giant sloth lived primarily in North America between 5 million and 11,000 years ago.

Although smaller than dinosaurs and woolly mammoths, Megatheria were among the largest land animals. Their length reached six meters.

Megatheria were relatives of modern sloths, armadillos and anteaters.

Megatheria's skeleton was extremely strong. Probably, the animal had great strength, but did not differ in speed of movement.

Many scientists believe that Megatheria used their long forelimbs, equipped with large claws, to pluck leaves from trees and strip bark at a height inaccessible to smaller animals.

However, it is also suggested that megatheria could also eat meat. The shape of their ulnas suggests the ability to move quickly with their forelimbs. It is possible that Megatheria killed their prey with a wave of their paws.

"Terrible Birds" (Phorusrhacidae)

Flightless birds could swallow a medium-sized dog or similar animal in one fell swoop.

AT last years scientists are attempting to clone extinct animal species, including the Pyrenean ibex, the marsupial wolf, the passenger pigeon and even the woolly mammoth.

Let's hope that they don't think of experimenting with the DNA of members of the Fororakos family - or, as they are also called, "terrible birds" from the crane-like order.

These flightless birds reached three meters in height, ran at speeds up to 50 km / h and could swallow a medium-sized dog in one fell swoop.

Due to their height and long neck, such a “terrible bird” could detect prey at a great distance, and long, powerful legs allowed them to develop the high speed necessary for hunting.

With their down-curving beaks, forarokids tore prey in much the same way as modern birds of prey do.

The "terrible birds" lived between 60 and two million years ago. Most of the fossilized remains known to us are found in South America, and part - in the North.

At one time, some scientists argued, based on finds in Florida, that these birds died out only 10,000 years ago, but later it turned out that the age of the remains found is much older.

It is believed that the closest living bird relatives of the Forarokoids are the Cariamidae family living in South America, whose representatives reach 80 cm in height.

Megalodon (Carcharodon megalodon or Carcharocles megalodon)

The fossil megalodon was much larger than the modern white shark

You may have heard stories about basking sharks that are three times as long as a great white shark and 30 times as heavy as a great white. Do not worry: such monsters have not existed for a long time.

They are called megalodons, and no one knows exactly how big they really were. Like all sharks, the skeleton of the megalodon consisted of cartilage, not bones, so almost no fossils have survived to this day.

As a result, one has to draw conclusions about the size of this fish only on the basis of the teeth found, from which the Greek name of the monsters comes, meaning “huge tooth” in translation, and individual fragments of the vertebrae.

Megalodon gets its name from giant teeth

According to the latest estimates of scientists, the length of the megalodon was 16-20 m. For comparison, the length of the largest modern fish - the great white shark - does not exceed 12.6 m.

In the giant jaws of megalodon, there were over 200 serrated teeth, each up to 18 cm long. The jaw compression force was 11-18 tons - 4-6 times higher than that of a tyrannosaurus rex.

The suggestion that the megalodon survived to this day was made in the movie "Monster Shark: Megalodon Lives", shown in 2013 on the Discovery Channel.

The film received scathing criticism for using falsified video footage and commentary from actors posing as scientists.

Real scientists believe that megalodon lived in the period from 15.9 to 2.6 million years ago. After that, according to scientific work, published in 2014, whales became the largest inhabitants of the oceans.

Vertebra of Titanoboa and modern medium snake

This colossal snake looked like a modern common boa constrictor, but acted more like today's anaconda living in the Amazon jungle. It was a slippery swamp dweller and a huge predator capable of eating any animal it hunted. The diameter of his body was close to the waist of a man of our time.

In the swampy jungle, the life of the titanoboa was surprisingly long due to the constant incessant rain, abundant vegetation and living creatures. Deep-water rivers allowed the snake to both go to the depths and crawl around palm trees and rolling jungles.

The river basin in which the titanoboa fed was teeming with giant tortoises and crocodiles of at least three different species. A giant fish also lived here, three times the size of the current inhabitants of the Amazon.

On March 22, 2012, a 14-meter reconstruction of the Titanoboa skeleton created for the Smithsonian Channel's Titanoboa-themed non-fiction program Titanoboa: Monster Snake was unveiled at New York's Grand Central Terminal.

In 2014, in southwestern China's Yunnan province, researchers discovered the remains of a marine reptile with an unusual skull, whose jawbones were bent down like a flamingo's beak. These jaws were literally strewn with hundreds of densely packed needle-like teeth.

The species received a Latin name Atopodentatus unicus- it reflects the characteristic features of the structure of an ancient animal and consists of the words "unique" and "strangely toothed".

The creature, presumably, reached a length of 2-3 meters, had a short neck and flippers. An estimate of the age of the fossils showed that the reptile lived on our planet about 243-244 million years ago, that is, in the middle Triassic.

This is about 6-8 million years after the Permian mass extinction, during which 96% of all marine and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species disappeared from the face of the Earth.

The marine reptiles of the Triassic period were mainly predators. Therefore, based on the available material, paleontologists decided that A. unicus fed on some animals that burrow into the bottom soil, for which he needed such jaws. However, there was one problem - the skull of the fossil was literally flattened, and it was not possible to determine its original shape.

New and much better preserved fossils have revealed some details about the structure of the reptile's skull and forced scientists to reconsider their original position. They were studied by an international team of researchers led by Nick Fraser from the National Museum of Scotland.

The main discovery was skull shape, Which was T-shaped and looked like a hammer. Anterior edges of the lower and upper jaw the fossil were covered with teeth resembling pointed pegs and very similar to similar teeth in terrestrial herbivorous dinosaurs, such as diplodocus.

Initial idea of ​​the shape of the head of Atopodentatus unicus

Refined representation of the head shape of Atopodentatus unicus

The top row of teeth in A. unicus was single, while the bottom row was double. The rest of the surface of the edge of the jaws was occupied by needle-like thinner teeth located very close to each other (similar to a kind of grid).

“In order to find out how the jaws of a fossil reptile actually worked, we bought clay for children’s art and inserted toothpicks into it,” the authors do not hesitate to describe their reasoning and flight of fancy in a research press release. how they close and described it."

Scientists unanimously decided that it is most likely simply impossible to catch and chew an animal with such teeth, but peacefully eating algae in underwater pastures is very convenient.

In their article, published in the journal Science Advances, the authors say that the reptiles of this species probably grabbed the algae with their front teeth, tearing them off at the roots, after which the plants were filtered out with a stream of water on smaller teeth. Losses with this method of supply should have been minimal.

Paleontologists continue to work in the hope of finding new A. unicus skeletons and confirming their theory, which clearly illustrates how unusual forms nature can resort to in order to continue its existence and successfully adapt to the constantly changing conditions of life on our planet.

If someone is lucky enough to find fossilized shells on the beach, then it is not difficult to recognize them. But there are also many fossils, looking at which it is difficult to guess what they were. Compounding the problem is that many of the fossils are incomplete or poorly preserved. Sometimes even scientists are in doubt. In our review of 10 fossils that have been unrecognized for many decades.

1. Ammonites

Fossilized ammonites are still quite common today, but for thousands of years they were mistaken for anything but shellfish. The ancient Greeks believed that these were ram's horns, and named ammonites in honor of the Egyptian god Amun, who was depicted with approximately the same horns. The ancient Chinese called them hornstones for a similar reason. In Nepal, fossilized ammonites were considered a shrine left by the god Vishnu. The Vikings considered them to be the sacred petrified offspring of the world serpent Jörmungard.

In the Middle Ages, ammonites were known in Europe as serpent stones, as they were thought to be the petrified bodies of coiled snakes that had been turned to stone by Christian saints. Today it became known that ammonites are just fossilized shells of creatures that died out about four hundred million years ago.

2. Fish teeth

Fossil teeth of fish in different centuries were considered various items. Some ancient fish species had flat molars for crushing mollusks. In Greece, and later in most of Europe, the fossilized remains of such teeth were considered magic stones, and often they were called toad stones. Similar teeth were used in jewelry, and it was also believed that epilepsy and poisoning could be cured with their help. In Japan, the petrified flat and sharp teeth of sharks were considered the claws of the terrible monster tengu, in Europe the teeth were the tongue of the devil.

3. Trees

Lepidodendron is an ancient tree whose bark was covered with large flat scales, like a pine cone. The leaves themselves of this tree were similar to stems, so lepidodendron is considered more grass than a tree. Most of the coal deposits in Europe are the remains of these ancient plants. Previously, whole fossilized trunks of lepidodendrons were often found, the length of such a trunk could be up to thirty meters, and a thickness of about a meter. In the 19th century, they were passed off as the bodies of snakes and dragons.

4. Foraminifera

On the Pacific beaches in southern Japan, you can find completely unusual grains of sand. Many of them are shaped like tiny stars, less than a millimeter in diameter. Local legends claim that these are the remains of unfortunate children from the heavenly union of two stars. These star children died either from falling to the ground or were killed by a monstrous snake that lives in the sea near the Japanese island of Okinawa. In fact, these tiny stars are the remains of the spiny shells of another life form: amoeba-like creatures called foraminifera.

5. Protoceratops

Dinosaurs called protoceratops were relatives of the better-known triceratops. They walked on four legs and were about the size of a large dog, although much heavier. Most Protoceratops had a large, bird-like skull and a bony frill growing from the back of the skull. To people not familiar with dinosaurs, the surviving skeletons of Protoceratops resembled fantastic and bizarre creatures. Because of their size, these dinosaurs were thought to be small lions with a hooked beak like an eagle's. It is possible that it is the protoceratops that are the prototype of the mythical griffins.

6. Belemnites

Belemnites were ancient animals that resembled squids. Unlike squids, they had a skeleton, and all of their ten tentacles were the same length, and they were covered with tiny hooks. Belemnites lived at the same time as dinosaurs, inhabiting the seas. The most common fossilized parts of the skeletons of belemnites, which look like long bullets. In Europe, people thought these fossils were the thunderbolts of the gods that fell to the ground. Other people thought that belemnites belonged to elves, not gods, considering them to be elves' fingers, fairy candles, or elves' arrows.

7. Anchisaurs

Anchisaurs were one of the earliest types of dinosaurs. They were herbivorous, had long necks and tails, and were also early relatives of the better-known brontosaurs and diplodocus. Only, unlike them, the size of anchisaurs was only 2m. Paradoxically, but initially the bones of these dinosaurs were mistaken for the bones of a primitive human ancestor.

8. Mastodons and mammoths

A few thousand years ago, giant mammoths and mastodons roamed the icy land. They looked like hairy elephants with huge tusks. Like modern elephants, these animals had very developed strong trunks, which is why the structure of the skeleton of these animals suggested a large hole in the skull. People who had never seen elephants assumed that these huge fossilized skulls with a giant hole in the front belonged to Cyclopes, mythical giant one-eyed humanoids.

9. Sea urchins

sea ​​urchins- prickly spherical creatures that are usually found along the shores of the sea. Sea urchins have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and their ancient ancestors are left with many fossils. In England, such fossils were mistaken for supernatural crowns, loaves of bread, or magical snake eggs. In Denmark, they were considered thunderstones, as they allegedly released moisture before violent storms.

10 Hominid

The ancestors of modern humans left behind many fossils all over the earth. Because of their apparent inconsistency with human bones, these fossils have often been considered evidence of various anthropoids. mythical creatures mentioned in the Bible, such as giants and demons. In other cultures, Neanderthal skeletons found have given rise to legends about yetis and other hominid creatures.

Even ancient Greek philosophers racked their brains over the riddle of fossils. They found fossilized sea shells high in the mountains and guessed that they were once living beings. So, the philosophers assumed, this territory was once covered by the sea. Absolutely fair statement! But where did all these fossils come from? How did the shells get buried in the rocks?
Fossils are the remains and imprints of plants and animals that lived on Earth in bygone eras. However, it should be noted that only an insignificant part of extinct plants and animals turns into fossils. As a rule, their remains are either eaten by other animals, or decomposed under the influence of fungi and bacteria. Very soon there will be nothing left of them. The shells or hard bone skeletons of living organisms last longer, but eventually they are destroyed. And only when the remains are buried in the ground very quickly, even before they have had time to decompose, do they have a chance to survive and turn into a fossil.

Turning to stone

In order for a dead plant or animal to be quickly buried, it is necessary that a sedimentary layer, for example, sand or silt, form above it. Then his remains are soon deprived of access to air and as a result do not rot. Over many millions of years, the lower sedimentary layers under the pressure of the newly formed upper layers turn into solid rock. Water seeping into sedimentary layers contains minerals. Sometimes it washes them out of the sedimentary material itself.
Ultimately, under the weight of the upper sedimentary layers, the water from the lower ones is displaced. However, the minerals remain inside and contribute to the bonding of sedimentary layers and their hardening into rock. These minerals are also deposited in the remains of plants and animals, filling the gaps between their cells, and sometimes even "replacing" their bones or shells. Thus, the remains, as it were, grow into the stone and remain in it for millions of years. Later long time the collision of the continents can squeeze this rock from the bottom of the sea to the surface, and land is formed in this place. Then rain, wind, or perhaps the sea will gradually erode the rock, revealing the fossils hidden within.

1. A dead animal sinks to the seabed.
2. Corpse-eaters and bacteria soon cleanse his skeleton of flesh.
3. A sedimentary layer forms on top.
4. Minerals dissolved in water seep into the rock family and animal remains.
5. Water is forced out of the rock, and it becomes dense and hard. The minerals contained in the water gradually replace the bone substance in the bones.
6. Millions of years later, rock rises from the seabed and becomes dry land. Rain, wind, or perhaps the sea eventually destroy it, exposing the fossils hidden in it.

Perfect fossils

The well-preserved fossils include insects and other small organisms immured in amber. Amber is obtained from a sticky resin that oozes from the trunks of some tree species when their integuments are damaged. This resin emits a fragrant odor that attracts insects. Sticking to the drink, they are trapped. Then the resin hardens and a solid transparent substance is formed, which reliably protects the remains of the animal from decomposition. As a result, the fragile organisms of ancient insects and spiders found in amber are perfectly preserved. You can even extract genetic material (DNA) from them and subject it to analysis.
Some of the most fragile and delicate fossils are found in rocks related to coal deposits. Coal is a black, hard rock composed primarily of carbon found in the remains of ancient plants. Its deposits were formed millions of years ago in swampy forests. From time to time, such swampy forests were flooded by the sea, and they were buried under a thick layer of silt. Rapidly accumulating, the silt soon hardened and compressed, forming mudstones and shales.
The leaves and stems of plants that grew in those forests are sometimes preserved as coal seams or thin black films of carbon separating the layers of shale. In other cases, only imprints of tree bark, leaves or fern stalks are preserved in rocks. Shales are easily split in a horizontal plane, and on the newly exposed surface one can easily identify petrified imprints of whole branches with leaves.
Even more interesting are the fossils that are found in the so-called concretions. They occur when water saturated with lime seeps into the remains of a plant. After the water evaporates, the remains are inside the limestone rock, and the entire fragile structure of the plant is imprinted in limestone in great detail.

Dinosaur footprint preserved in rocks near Moenow, Arizona, USA

traces of the past

It happens that the actual remains of a particular animal are not preserved, but some imprints, such as traces, remain. Sometimes traces of animals, in the literal sense of the word, are preserved in sedimentary rocks, for example, if the prints left by them in the sand are filled with silt, and in this form they are "preserved" for millions of years. In addition to footprints, animals can leave other traces, say, furrows in sediment layers, when they make their way through the thickness of the silt, eat detritus ( organic matter in the form of particles suspended in water) or buried in the bottom of a lake or sea. These "petrified footprints" not only make it possible to establish the very fact of the presence of a given animal in a given place, but also provide scientists with valuable information about its lifestyle and manner of movement.
Hard-shelled animals, such as trilobites and horseshoe crabs, can make a wide variety of imprints in soft mud, whether they are resting, moving, or feeding. Many of these footprints were given separate names by scientists because they had no idea which animal had left them.
Sometimes the dung of an animal turns into a fossil. It can be preserved so well that scientists use it to determine what the animal ate. Moreover, undigested food is occasionally found in the stomachs of well-preserved animal fossils. For example, in the belly of ichthyosaurs, dolphin-like marine reptiles, whole fish are sometimes found - the remains of a meal that the predator's body did not have time to digest before death.

Casts and molds
Sometimes water, penetrating into the sediments, completely dissolves the remains of the organism buried in them, and a recess remains in this place, exactly reproducing its former outlines. The result is the petrified form of this animal (left). Subsequently, the recess is filled with various mineral substances, and a petrified cast is formed with the same outlines as the disappeared animal, but not reproducing its internal structure (right).

Footprints on the stone

The fossilized footprints of dinosaurs have provided us with a wealth of information about how these animals moved and what kind of life they led. For example, the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs allow us to establish how wide they spread their legs when walking. This, in turn, gives an answer to the question of how the legs were located: on the sides of the body, like in modern lizards, or vertically down, providing the body with a stronger support. Moreover, these footprints can even determine the speed at which the dinosaur moved.
The scientists also determined which dinosaurs dragged their tail along the ground while walking, and which kept it suspended. Fossilized chains of footprints have been preserved in some areas of the United States various kinds carnivorous (carnivorous) and herbivorous dinosaurs. The tracks belonged to many animals moving in the same direction. This means that dinosaurs moved in herds or flocks. The size of the imprints makes it possible to judge the number of young animals in a given herd and its location among adult animals during the transition.

The blue dream of fossil hunters - piles of ammonites and bivalve shells in one place. This is a typical example of post-mortem accumulation: fossils do not occur where animals have died. They were once carried away by water currents and dumped in a heap in a completely different place, where they ended up buried under a sedimentary layer. These animals lived on Earth about 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic period.

Recreating the past

The science that studies fossils is called paleontology, which in Greek means "the study of ancient life." Unfortunately, recreating pictures of the past with the help of fossils is not nearly as easy as it might seem from looking at the drawings in this chapter. Indeed, even in those extremely rare cases when the remains of plants and animals are very quickly carried by sedimentary layers and preserved in the form of fossils, they, as a rule, do not remain undisturbed. Rivers and streams can carry them away and pile them up, splitting solid skeletons. In this case, the heavier fragments settle and take a different position than in life, and the lighter fragments are washed away with water. Further, floods and landslides often break the protective layer of sedimentary layers that has developed over the fossils. Other plants and animals have almost no chance of being preserved as fossils, since they live in areas where there is not enough sedimentary material. For example, the likelihood that the remains of the inhabitants of forests or savannahs will be carried away to any body of water and buried there under a layer of sand or silt, which will allow them to turn into a fossil, is extremely small.
In the same way that detectives need to know whether a corpse has been moved or not, so paleontologists need to be sure that the fossilized remains found in one place or another belong to an animal that actually died in this place and in the same position, in which one was found. If this is indeed the case, then such finds in their totality are referred to as an intravital accumulation. The study of such clusters allows you to determine which animals lived in a given area. Often this makes it possible to judge the nature of their habitat - whether they lived in water or on land, whether the climate here was warm or cold, wet or dry. In addition, much can be learned about the natural environment that existed here in antiquity by studying the rocks characteristic of the area. But again, it happens all too often that fossil remains are carried far from the place where the animal died, and besides, they fall apart along the way. Moreover, some land animals simply end up in the sea, which often confuses researchers. Fossil finds that have found their last refuge far from the places where these animals and plants once died are called post-mortem accumulations.

The story of the fossil named anomalocaris. - a clear illustration of the difficulties that lie in wait for a scientist trying to restore an extinct animal from the few surviving fragments. Anomalocaris (1) was a large, strange shrimp-like creature that lived in the early Cambrian seas. For many years, only separate fragments of this animal fell into the hands of scientists, so different from each other that they were initially mistaken for representatives of completely different biological species. As it turned out later, the original "anomalocaris" (2) was just the head part, "laggania" (3) - the body, and "peytoia" (4) - the mouth of the same animal.

What did they look like in life?

One of the most exciting activities paleontologists - the assembly of a single fossil from the few surviving fragments. In the case when an extinct animal is unlike any of the living ones, it is not so simple. In the past, scientists often mistook different parts of the same animal for the remains of different creatures and even gave them different names.
Early paleontologists studying 570-million-year-old fossils from the 570-million-year-old Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies discovered several strange fossils. One of the finds looked like a rather unusual tail tip of a small shrimp. She was given the name anomalocaris, which means "strange shrimp". Another fossil looked like a flattened jellyfish with a hole in the middle and was named pei-tosh. The third fossil, called Laggania, looked like the crushed body of a sea cucumber. Later, paleontologists found the fossilized remains of laggania and peytoya next to each other and came to the conclusion that this is a sponge and a jellyfish sitting on it.
These fossils were then put on the shelves of museum cabinets, they were forgotten about and remembered only a few years ago. Now a new generation of paleontologists have fished them out of the dusty boxes and began to study them anew. Scientists noticed that all three types of fossils were often found in rocks nearby. Maybe there is some connection between them? Paleontologists have carefully studied many such finds and have come to a startling conclusion: these fossils are nothing but different body parts of the same animal, a truly extremely "strange shrimp"! Moreover, this animal was perhaps the largest inhabitant of the seas of that era. It looked like a huge legless shrimp up to 66 cm long, with an oval head (tuzoya), two large stalked eyes and a large round mouth (peitoya) with hard teeth. In front, the "strange shrimp" had a pair of limbs up to 18 cm long for capturing food (anomalocaris). Well, the lagania turned out to be the flattened remains of the body of this animal.

Petrified remains of the Triassic forest in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, USA. Forests can petrify when the sea suddenly covers them. However, the minerals contained in sea ​​water, seep into the wood and crystallize in it, forming a solid rock. Sometimes such crystals can be seen in tree trunks with the naked eye: they give the wood a beautiful red or purple hue.

fossils come alive

If you can read the pages of the stone chronicle, then you will discover many interesting facts from the life of the inhabitants of our planet in its distant past. Ammonite shells with characteristic markings (most likely, these are the teeth marks of a mosasaurus, a large marine reptile) indicate that they were often attacked by other animals. Traces of rodent teeth on the fossil bones of various mammals indicate that these rodents fed on carrion - they ate corpses. The fossilized remains of a starfish were found surrounded by shells of molluscs, which it apparently fed on. And the lungfish are perfectly preserved in the petrified silt, where they once slumbered peacefully in their burrows. Even baby dinosaurs have been found caught dead at the very moment when they hatched from eggs. But all this, alas, is very rare finds. Usually, in order to get an idea of ​​the way of life of long-extinct animals, scientists have to sort of transfer, extrapolate to them the behavior of modern animals related to them - their distant descendants.

Equipment for hunting for fossils. The head of a geological hammer has a special flat edge for breaking off rock samples and a wedge-shaped tip that is pushed into the gaps between pieces of rock in order to push them apart. In addition, you can use chisels to work with stone of various sizes. A notepad and compass will come in handy to record the exact location of the fossil in the rock, as well as the direction of the rock in the quarry or cliff. A hand magnifier will help you identify tiny fossils such as fish teeth or scales. Some geologists prefer to carry an acid solution with them, with which they extract fragile fossils from the rock, but it is still better to do this in the laboratory, where more delicate operations are usually carried out using a variety of needles, tweezers and scrapers. The electrical device presented here is a vibrator, it is used to loosen pieces of rock

hunting for fossils

It's amazing how many different places you can find fossils these days - not only in cliffs and quarries, but also in the stones that make up the walls of city houses, in construction debris, and even in your own garden. But all of them are found only in sedimentary rocks - limestone, chalk, sandstone, mudstone, clay or slate.
To become a good fossil hunter, it is best to seek the advice of experienced professionals. Find out if there is a geological society or museum nearby that organizes expeditions for fossils. There you will be shown the most promising places to look and explain where fossils usually lie.

artificially dyed X-ray allows you to consider the internal structure of the fossil ammonite. It shows thin walls separating the internal chambers of the shell.

Homework

Like any detective, you will need to find out as much as you can about the "clues" you are after. Check out your local library and find out what rock types are found in your area. The library should have maps on which these breeds are indicated. What is their age? What fossils do you expect to find in them? Go to the local history museum, see what fossils were found in the area before you. In most cases, you will only come across isolated fragments of fossils, and they are much easier to spot if you know what you are looking for in advance.

A geologist extracts fossilized dinosaur bones from rock using a very thin chisel in Dinosaur National Park, USA.

What the Fossils Say

Environment. Fossils allow you to determine the type of environment in which a given rock was formed. Climate. Fossils can be used to judge the nature of the climate of the area in ancient times. Evolution. Fossils allow us to trace how biological forms have changed over millions of years.
Dating of rocks. Fossils help to establish the age of the rocks containing them, as well as to trace the movements of the continents.

Safety first

It is extremely important to properly prepare for a fossil trek. Wandering at the foot of a cliff or climbing the walls of a quarry is not a safe occupation. First of all, you should obtain the consent of the owners of the territory to conduct such research there. They, in turn, will be able to warn you of possible dangers. Quarries and cliffs are usually deserted and unsafe places, and you should never go there alone. When leaving, be sure to leave a note or let your family know where you can be found.
Professional fossil hunters, paleontologists, usually take pieces of rock containing fossils to their laboratory. If the fossils are very fragile or crumble heavily, they are covered with a protective layer of gypsum or foam before being freed from the rock. In the laboratory, scientists extract their findings from the accompanying rock using dental drills, water jets under high pressure and even acid solutions. Often, before starting to work with a fossil, paleontologists impregnate it with a special chemical composition to make it stronger. At each stage of the work, they carefully sketch all the details and take many photographs of both the fossil itself and everything that surrounded it.
Put some kind of hard headgear on your head - say, a motorcycle helmet is quite suitable. Do not start hammering on the rock without wearing protective or at least simple glasses: the smallest particles flying off the rock at high speed can seriously damage your eyes. Don't try to hammer the fossil out of the cliff wall. The resulting vibrations can quickly loosen the rock above your head and cause rockfall. As a rule, you will be able to find a lot of fossils in the rock fragments lying on the ground.

Your geological reports

A good amateur geologist always keeps detailed records of the work done. It is very important to know exactly when and where you discovered a given fossil. This means that you should not only write down the name of the cliff itself, the quarry, or the construction site, but also describe the specific location where you found the fossil. Was she in a large piece of rock or in a small one? Did you find it near a cliff or directly in the ground? Were there any other fossils nearby? If so, which ones? How were the fossils arranged in the rock? All this data will help you learn more about the lifestyle of the animal and how it died. Try to sketch the place where you found your trophy. This will be easier to do with checkered paper. Of course, you can take a picture of this place, but drawing often allows you to better capture the details of the landscape.
Photos and drawings will be very helpful if you can't take the fossils home with you. In some cases, a plaster cast of the fossil can be made, or a mold can be molded from plasticine. Even if the fossil is firmly fixed in the rock, it can tell you a lot about the history of the area.
Don't forget to bring packing materials for transporting the fossils. Large and durable specimens can be wrapped in newsprint and placed in a plastic bag. Small fossils are best placed in a plastic jar, after stuffing it with cotton wool. Make labels for the boxes and for the fossils themselves. You yourself will not notice how you will forget where and when you discovered the various exhibits of your collection.

Paleontologists usually cover fossil bones with a layer of plaster to keep them from breaking and cracking during transport to a museum. To do this, the bandages are soaked in a plaster solution and wrapped around the fossils or pieces of rock in which they are located.

History of the Claws

In 1983, English amateur paleontologist William Walker was looking for fossils in a clay quarry in Surrey. Suddenly he noticed a large round stone block, from which a small piece of bone protruded. Walker split this block with a hammer, and pieces of a huge claw almost 35 cm long fell out of it. He sent his find to London, to the British Museum of Natural History, where experts very soon realized that they were dealing with an extremely curious specimen - the claw of a carnivorous dinosaur. The museum sent a scientific expedition to this clay quarry, and its members managed to unearth many other bones of the same animal - with a total weight of over two tons. An unknown dinosaur was nicknamed "Claws".

How to save "Claws"
To prevent the bones from drying out and cracking, scientists put plaster bandages on some of them. The rock that contained the fossils was carefully removed using special equipment. The bones were then strengthened by soaking them in resin. Finally, copies of the bones were made from fiberglass and plastic to be sent to other museums.

How to assemble Humpty Dumpty
When scientists assembled a whole skeleton from scattered bones, they realized that they had discovered a completely new species of dinosaurs. They named it bary-onyx walkery. Baryonyx in Greek means "heavy claw", and the word walkery was added in honor of the discoverer of baryonyx, William Walker. Baryonyx reached a length of 9-10 m. Apparently, it moved on its hind legs, and its height was approximately 4 m. The "Claws" weighed about two tons. Its elongated narrow muzzle and mouth with many teeth resembled the muzzle of a modern crocodile; this suggested that Baryonyx fed on fish. Fish teeth and scales were found in the dinosaur's stomach. The found long claw, apparently, showed off on his thumb front paw. It is difficult to say why this claw served the baryonix - for catching fish? Or maybe he caught her in his mouth, like crocodiles?
The clay quarry where Claws found its death 124 million years ago was at that time a lake formed in a large river valley; there were many swamps around, overgrown with horsetails and ferns. After the death of Baryonyx, his corpse was washed into the lake, where he was quickly buried under a layer of mud and silt. In the same layers, it was possible to find the remains of some varieties of herbivorous dinosaurs, including the late Iguanodon. However, Baryonyx is the only species of carnivorous dinosaur known from rocks. given age all over the globe. 30 years ago, similar bones were found in the Sahara Desert, and probably dinosaurs related to Baryonyx were distributed over a vast territory - from modern England to North Africa.

craft tools

In order to split the rock and extract the fossil from it, you will need a geological hammer (the one with the big flat end). A set of chisels specially designed for working with stone will help you clear excess rock from your find. But be extremely careful: you can easily break the fossil itself. Soft rock can be scraped off with an old kitchen knife, but a toothbrush will do just fine to remove dust and small particles stuck to the fossil.

A paleontologist removes rock remains from a dinosaur vertebra with a dental saw with a diamond cutting edge. Then he will clean the fossil of the remaining rock particles with a finer engraving tool.

From trilobites to tyrannosaurs, most fossils are the remains of creatures with a rigid shell or skeleton. These materials do not decompose easily, but after a while they are covered with sedimentary deposits that retain information about the creature that is still with us, millions of years after it died.

Soft-bodied organisms such as worms decay rapidly and their fossils are very fragmentary. In exceptional circumstances, however, their remains have been preserved, sometimes in the most unusual places. Paleontologists can use such discoveries to open new pages in the history of life on Earth. A recent incredible find in 50-million-year-old Antarctic rocks is fossilized worm sperm. So there are far stranger fossils than dinosaur bones. Here are some of the most unusual examples.

1 Ancient Sperm

Worm sperm. Photo: Palaeobiology Department, Swedish Museum of Natural History

This remarkable find, a fossilized clitellate spermatozoon, is the oldest animal sperm ever discovered. She broke the previous record when springtail sperm was found in at least 10 million years old Baltic amber.

The preservation of sperm is made possible because such worms reproduce by releasing their eggs and sperm into protective cocoons. Therefore, the hard shell kept intact the cocoons that scientists found in shallow sea bays on the Antarctic Peninsula. The spermatozoon was found on a piece of gravel thanks to an analysis carried out using a powerful microscope.

This sperm most closely resembles the sperm of leech-like worms that attach themselves to crayfish. However, they are currently found only in the northern hemisphere. Researchers believe it could be the sperm of another unknown ancient worm.

2 Fossilized excrement and vomit of ancient reptiles

Strange things are found on fossils. Photo: Poozeum/Wikimedia Commons

Coprolites - petrified excrement, are of great paleoecological significance. From them you can determine what the extinct creature ate.

In Australia, they determined that Cretaceous plesiosaurs were lower feeders, that is, they foraged at the bottom of reservoirs. Fossilized vomit containing squashed fish found in Poland has helped explain how life resurfaced after the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history. In Jurassic shales from Peterborough and Whitby in England, layers of squid-like belemnites have been interpreted as ichthyosaur vomit.

3 Silurian Shrimp

If a 50-million-year-old sperm was a big surprise, what about a 425-million-year-old shrimp penis? In a ditch near the Anglo-Welsh border, in the early 2000s, a tiny ostracod was discovered, by all indications, clearly male. It was preserved in three dimensions, all soft tissues were petrified.

During the Silurian period (443-419 million years ago), the Welsh frontier was on the shelf of a tropical sea. Marine animals died of suffocation and were buried under a thick layer of petrified ash from volcanoes. Ostracods and countless other small fossils cannot be studied with a microscope, however their mineral tomb must be gradually excavated and the fossil beings must be recreated in 3D digital images.

4 Yorkshire Rhinos

Buckland in the Hyena Cave. Photo: Public Domain

In 1821, very strange fossils were found in Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire, England. The gravel pit workers found a deep crevice in the rock, full of large animal bones. At first glance, it seemed that they were the bones of cows, but a local naturalist noticed that they looked unusual. The remains were sent to Oxford University to Professor William Buckland.

Buckland was an outstanding experimental scientist, the founder of paleoecology. He determined that these were the bones of large herbivores such as elephants and rhinos. The bones were partially gnawed, and petrified excrement was scattered all over the place, which by all indications belonged to hyenas. Buckland came to the conclusion that this cave was a den of hyenas.

5. Mysterious monster

A piece of history. Photo: Ghedoghedo/CC BY SA 3.0-Wikimedia Commons

Fossils in Maison Creek, Illinois, were discovered during coal mining in the 19th century. But it was only in the 1950s that the place became known thanks to the discovery of Francis Tully. He found a perfectly preserved fossil of a very strange beast: the imprint of a soft-bodied animal was found inside a cracked boulder.

It was a unique find. The beast was given the name Tullimonstrum gregarium. The fossil even received state status in the state of Illinois. However, no one knows what kind of animal it is. It is several inches long, has a long snout with toothy pincers for a mouth, two stalked eyes, a segmented body, and a fin-like tail. It was probably a predator, and the stone in which it was found suggests that it lived in shallow tropical seas. This animal cannot be classified as another invertebrate species, living or extinct. Even in the case of exceptional preservation, fossils are always surprising.

Liam Herringshaw is a lecturer in geology and physical geography at the University of Hull in the UK. This article was previously published on TheConversation.com