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American Museum of Natural History
Course: American Museum of Natural History > Unit 1
Lesson 4: Dinosaur fossils- Fossil preparation
- What Is a fossil?
- How do we know where to look for dinosaur fossils?
- How do we know where to look for dinosaur fossils?
- How are dinosaur fossils discovered and collected?
- How are dinosaur fossils discovered and collected?
- How are dinosaur fossils prepared in the laboratory?
- How are dinosaur fossils prepared in the laboratory?
- Preparing dinosaur fossils
- Inside the Collections: Paleontology and the Big Bone Room
- Can we clone extinct dinosaurs from DNA preserved in their fossils?
- Can we clone dinosaurs from DNA?
- Barnum Brown: The man who discovered Tyrannosaurus rex
- Quiz: Dinosaur Fossils
- Exploration Questions: Dinosaur Fossils
- Answers to Exploration Questions: Dinosaur Fossils
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What Is a fossil?
Fossils are naturally-preserved physical traces of long-dead organisms. Usually, these traces consist of an organism's hard parts, such as bones, teeth, shells, or wood. Occasionally, when conditions are optimal, soft parts of organisms can also fossilize, such as impressions of skin, body outlines, and, more commonly, leaves. Other traces of objects made by organisms, such as footprints, burrows, and nests, also qualify to be called fossils. Most definitions of fossils require that the organism's body part or other physical trace be more than 10,000 years old in order to truly be called a fossil. Created by American Museum of Natural History.
Want to join the conversation?
- How can archaeologists and curators bring the footprints of dinosaurs to the museum and preserve those things?(13 votes)
- My guess is they remove the footprints carefully using precise tools.
They have a lot of knowledge on how to remove it carefully without breaking or cracking the fossil.
They preserve them by having them in a room temperate room so the footprints don't turn corrosive.(10 votes)
- How do scientists find the age of a fossil(4 votes)
- what kind of tools do archaeologists use?(3 votes)
- it depends on what they are looking for if its a tooth they just have to dig if it was an entire skeleton they would have to use a whole matter of eqipment(1 vote)
- why does a fossil have to be considered 10,000 to be a fossil(2 votes)
- Are there any other fossils of different organisms (besides dinosaurs) that you have found?(1 vote)
- do they use a metal detector(0 votes)
- do you find organs or some skin of acient dinosaurs(0 votes)
Video transcript
People have different definitions of
what fossils are, but basically the key point is that fossils are some trace of an ancient extinct organism. Most of the fossils, especially when
it comes to dinosaurs, are bones like these big vertebra or teeth from a dinosaur, hard parts. And, if you're looking for other kinds of
fossils, seashell fossils of various kinds, there are fossil leaves in wood from plants, all of
those qualify as fossils because they're traces of ancient organisms.
Sometimes, other types of body parts like skin and
fossil footprints that were left by animals are also found, and these too
qualify for fossils. So basically, a fossil is any trace of
an ancient organism, either a hard part, or a soft part, or some product that they
left behind and usually this trace has to be over ten
thousand years old in order to be considered a fossil.