Things of the past

Usage examples of fossils.

Animal fossils repeatedly turned up on opposite sides of oceans that were clearly too wide to swim.

He conducted experiments with chemicals, investigated methods of coal mining and canal building, toured salt mines, speculated on the mechanisms of heredity, collected fossils, and propounded theories on rain, the composition of air, and the laws of motion, among much else.

The marine fossils on mountaintops, he decided, had not been deposited during floods, but had risen along with the mountains themselves.

The frustrating position then was that although they could place the various rocks and fossils in order by age, they had no idea how long any of those ages were.

Englishman was having an insight into the value of fossils that would also have lasting ramifications.

At every change in rock strata certain species of fossils disappeared while others carried on into subsequent levels.

Anning would spend the next thirty-five years gathering fossils, which she sold to visitors.

Such fossils have been found just once, and then no more are known for 500 million years.

About 95 percent of all the fossils we possess are of animals that once lived under water, mostly in shallow seas.

The fossils were far more varied and magnificent than Walcott had indicated in his writings.

Burgess fossils, so goodness knows how close they may have come to extinction.

Wilson has noted that if you took selected species of modern insects and presented them as Burgess-style fossils nobody would ever guess that they were all from the same phylum, so different are their body plans.

This is partly because of a shortage of relevant fossils, but partly also because of an idiosyncratic Swede named Erik Jarvik whose odd interpretations and secretive manner held back progress on this question for almost half a century.

When finished they found that they had more than tripled the global total of dinosaur fossils from the late Cretaceous.

Dubois was driven to the East Indies on nothing stronger than a hunch, the availability of employment, and the knowledge that Sumatra was full of caves, the environment in which most of the important hominid fossils had so far been found.