Everyone from childhood or adolescence knows, or rather heard and remembers, that life on Earth originated 3.5 billion years ago. The huge figure is wrong? I don’t know how for you, but I perceive it almost in the same way as the infinity of space. Yes, yes, I do not perceive values close to infinity :). Even in my youth, I tried to imagine the infinity of the universe, and in order to understand and realize that I have to imagine something, and since then my consciousness has refused to fully understand the "billion" and other dubious-constant. And whenever I hear 285, or 400 million years ago, my consciousness generalizes this in a long time ago in ancient times. All this jumble of zeros is not perceived at all, and you do not ponder over them, clinging only to the first three digits, or even whistling past your ears as an unnecessary fact. And yet there are times when you think about all this. What is all this for? Of course, many of you know, Samara people for sure, that the Zhiguli, I mean the Zhiguli mountains, are made of limestone rocks. They were formed millions of years ago, at the bottom of ancient seas, from marine sediments, in the Carboniferous and Permian periods of the Paleozoic era. And the phrase that you read above seems like a dry fact about the past of our planet until you come across such an artifact.
And then all this information that you once heard, or read and until that moment somewhere dormant in the labyrinths of memory suddenly gathers into a single bundle and, as if acquiring energy, rolls over you in a wave. And the lack of information forces to stir up articles in search of answers to emerging questions. And the Zhiguli mountains themselves become interesting for you not only for their relief, natural beauties, gorgeous views, but also for the information that the layers of the rock from which they are composed carry, page after page opening their history for you, taking millions of years into the past, telling a story about a world that none of the representatives of the human race has ever seen.
It's hard to imagine now. But 300 million years ago, the waters of the ancient sea were rustling here, filling the trough of the East European Platform, it was connected in the north with the Arctic and the Tethys Ocean in the south. What we now see has been forming over millions of years and owes its appearance to living organisms that lived in ancient seas, countless shells of dead mollusks, corals, bryozoans formed colossal deposits of limestone. Of course, all of them are not completely preserved, but fragmented and changed by subsequent processes. But sometimes you can find quite distinctly preserved forms. So, for example, in the limestones of the Zhiguli mountains, fusulinid fossils are often found, as if fossilized grains scattered by someone they protrude from the rock.
Fusulinids, a detachment of extinct foraminifera of their fusiform shells, from which they got their name (fusus - spindle), are twisted in a spiral and divided by partitions into chambers. Fusulinid benthic inhabitants are found only in sediments of the Carboniferous and Permian periods of the Paleozoic era.
The fossil is not always easy to distinguish among the stone, sometimes it is worth taking a closer look and only then an alien from the past frozen in the stone will open to the eye, such as this four-pointed coral rugosa.
Rugoses are solitary polyps with an external limestone skeleton; their remains are very often found here in the Zhigulevsky and Sokolky mountains. They had a horn-like shape, some had a lid that closed the mouth in case of danger. Possessing increased requirements for the temperature and transparency of the water, they lived in shallow water, as a rule, in the shelf zone of the sea, attaching the sharp end of the cone to the seabed.
Along with fusulinides, they became extinct at the end of the Permian period, during the most massive extinction in the entire history of the Earth. Then 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates died, and this was the only known mass extinction of insects (about 57% of genera and 83% of species of the entire class), after which it took about 30 million years to restore the biosphere.
And here is another copy of my photo collection of fossils. This is a cross-section of the stem of a sea lily.
Despite its name, the sea lily is not a plant, it is a sedentary animal, feeding on plankton - foraminifera, small crustaceans, invertebrate larvae. Fossil sea lilies have been known since the Lower Ordovician; they flourished in the Middle Paleozoic, when there were over 5000 species, most of which became extinct, but some species exist to this day. The body of the animal resembles a calyx standing on a stem-leg in the center of which the mouth is located, and from the calyx "arms" grow in different directions, outwardly resembles a flower.
Another phototrafe for me was this fragment of the ammonite shell. Unfortunately, I did not manage to find a whole shell.
These cephalopods are distant relatives of modern nautilus, squid and octopus, lived in almost all seas and today the fossilized shells of these mollusks can be found in almost every area of the globe. Ammonites ended their existence about 65-70 million years ago.
They disappeared along with the dinosaurs, although they appeared much earlier than them.
Well, similar bivalves exist to this day in the seas and rivers.
The sea level changed, the temperature and salinity of the water changed, all this influenced the biosphere of the sea and now this is clearly reflected in the section of the sediment layers.
The East European platform rose, and the sea receded; the last sea, whose waters rose to our latitudes, was the Akchagyl Sea. It came from the direction of the present-day Caspian, the Zhigulevsky mountains already existed then and rose as an island above the raging waters.
Examining layer by layer, as if flipping through the pages of a book, one involuntarily thinks how fragile this whole world around us is.
How fragile life itself is and how great is the desire of all living things for life.
Education Department of the Administration of the Lebedyansky Municipal District of the Lipetsk Region
Municipal budgetary educational institution
DOD XUN Lebedyan
research
Fossil artifacts
Penkova Margarita Yurievna, grade 7, MBOU DOD XUN Lebedyan
d / o "Young Researcher" (on the basis of MBUSOSh village Kuiman)
Head - Olga A. Penkova
teacher d / o MBOU DOD XYUN Lebedyan
Lebedyan - 2014
Object of study: animal fossils.
Subject of study: places of discovery of fossils of the Lipetsk region, types of fossils.
Purpose of the study: determination of the places of dislocation of animal fossils and drawing up an idea of the peculiarities of nature in prehistoric times.
Tasks:
1. Collect samples of animal fossils at the designated points of the Lipetsk region.
2. Give a brief description of the fossil collection sites in the Lipetsk region.
3. Determine the approximate species of the fossils.
4. Determination of the approximate lifetime of the found fossils on a geochronological scale.
5. Make a general description of the features of the nature of the Devonian period of the Paleozoic era in the Lipetsk region.
6. Propose a route for amateur paleontologists in the Lipetsk region.
Methods:
Finding and collecting fossils in the field.
Description.
Working with the geochronological scale and Internet resources.
Compilation of a collection of found artifacts.
Plan
Introduction
1. Review of literature.
2.Materials and methods
3. General conclusions on the study and an approximate route for amateur paleontologists of the Lipetsk region.
Conclusion
List of literature and used Internet resources.
Application (collection of animal fossils).
Introduction.
I want to become a geologist. Not a lawyer, not an economist, not a doctor, but a geologist. I read somewhere that the most ancient profession is a geologist. After all, where did human civilization begin? From the fact that a person began to distinguish a stone that is suitable for making a stone ax from a stone that is not suitable for this purpose. And this is the foundations of geology. Thus, mining began in ancient times. Later, miners began to extract clay and coal. With the beginning of the era of the great geographical discoveries, the study of the Earth began. At this time, the first geologists-thinkers appeared who tried to guess where the minerals might be. But the profession of a geologist is connected not only with the search for minerals. For example, paleontology is the most interesting to me. My passion for paleontology began when I read a book by the famous Russian geologist Vladimir Afanasyevich Obruchev, which was called Plutonium. Paleontology (from ancient Greek. Ancient animals today have turned into fossils that can be found in rocks, for example, in limestones, which are abundant in the Lipetsk region. While making my trips to the geological school "Amethyst", I found a number of interesting samples of fossilized animals in the interesting places of the Lipetsk region, from each trip I brought a new interesting sample. And having studied them, I came to some conclusions about the past of the land on which I live. This work reflects my observations and conclusions.
Literature review.
Fossils (fossils, fossils) are evidence of the existence of life in prehistoric times. They consist of the remains of living organisms, completely replaced by minerals - calcite, apatite, chalcedony. Fossils are usually mineralized remains or
animal and plant prints preserved in soil, stones,
hardened resins. Fossils are also called preserved traces of, for example, the feet of an organism on soft sand, clay or mud.
Fossils are formed during fossilization processes. She
accompanied by the influence of various environmental factors during the passage of diagenetic processes - physical and chemical transformations, during the transition of the sediment into the rock, which includes the remains of organisms. Fossils are formed when dead plants and animals were not immediately eaten by predators or bacteria, but soon after death they were covered with silt, sand, clay, ash, which excluded oxygen access to them. During the formation of rocks from sediments, under the influence
In mineral solutions, organic matter decomposed and was replaced by minerals - most often calcite, pyrite, opal, chalcedony. At the same time, due to the gradual course of the replacement process, the external form and structural elements of the remains were preserved. Usually, only hard parts of organisms are preserved, for example, bones, teeth, chitinous shells, shells. Soft tissues decompose too quickly and do not have time to be replaced by mineral matter.
Plants during fossilization usually undergo complete destruction, leaving the so-called. prints and kernels. Also, plant tissues can be replaced by mineral compounds, most often silica, carbonate and pyrite. Such a complete or partial replacement of plant trunks while maintaining the internal structure is called petrification. SV Obruchev identified the following groups of fossils: 1) imprints-impressions of the body or, more often, the skeleton (shell) of the animal and the trunks, stems and leaves of plants on the surface of the rock; 2) Nuclei-casts of the inner cavity of shells, resulting from filling the void with rock after removing the soft parts. Nuclei without imprints are of very little importance, since the systematic position of mollusks and brachiopods is determined by the shape of the external sculpture and the structure of the castle. The nuclei are used to identify muscle attachments and to study other anatomical details. 3) Hard parts of organisms - bones, teeth, scales, shells, skeletons of corals and sponges, shells of echinoderms, etc. - for the most part are not preserved in their original form, but with partial or complete replacement of the primary substance with secondary ones - calcite, silica, sulfides , iron hydroxides, etc. In favorable conditions, chitinous and horny parts are also preserved. The most favorable rocks for the preservation of organic remains are marls, bituminous and clayey limestones, limestone and glauconite sands, sometimes sandstones and clay shales. Pure quartz sandstones and quartzites, especially in continuous strata, are very poor in fossils. Pure thick thick-bedded uniform limestones are also poor in fossils, but irregular masses of reef limestones and dolomites, sometimes very thick and without clear bedding, enclose corals, bryozoans, calcareous algae and other remains of animals that build reefs. In sandstones, the appearance of interlayers of shaly clays, limestones, marls increases the chances of finding fauna; lenses of carbonaceous shale and clay contain delicate imprints of leaves, and layers of sandstone - imprints of trunks; the latter are found even in thick layers of coarse-grained sandstones. Concretions (concretions) often contain fossil accumulations or individual specimens. Conglomerates, especially coarse ones, contain a small amount of only the strongest parts of organisms — the bones of vertebrates, thick shells, and trunks. Often abundant fossils are contained in thin interlayers or short lenses; in some cases, the remains of animals or plants accumulate in such quantities that they compose entire layers of rocks. Marine sediments are richer in organic remains than continental sediments. Heavily metamorphosed rocks contain organic remains only in extremely rare cases in a very poor condition, since when the rock changes and recrystallizes, the skeletons disappear or merge with the rock mass. The surface of the Lipetsk region is an elevated undulating plain, dissected by river valleys, gullies and ravines. The flatness of its territory is due to the geological structure, the presence at the base of a rigid crystalline basement, covered with sedimentary deposits with horizontal layers. As a result of modern erosion in the Lipetsk region, deposits of the Upper Devonian and younger deposits are exposed, which are represented by limestones, marls, dolomites with interlayers of clays of various shades, with the inclusion of quartz grains. Fauna is abundant in the rocks.
2.Materials and methods
2.1. Determination of points of the Lipetsk region for the search for fossils.
I collected my small collection of fossils in the Lipetsk region. It is located in the center of the European part of Russia, in the upper reaches of the Don, within the Central Russian Upland in the west (height up to 262 m) and the Oka-Don Plain in the east. In the north it borders on the Ryazan and Tula regions, in the west - on the Oryol region, in the south - on the Voronezh and Kursk regions, in the east - on the Tambov region. The main rivers are Don with tributaries Krasivaya Mecha, Sosna, Voronezh with tributaries Matyr, Usman, Stanovaya Ryasa.
The relief is erosional. The climate is moderately continental. The west of our region - the Don river basin is distinguished by a large number of limestone outcrops, I observed this during excursions to Dankovsky, Lebedyansky, Zadonsky and Khlevensky districts. I looked for fossil remains of animals in limestones and dolomites, because these rocks prevail in the Lipetsk region and you can often find their outcrops to the surface. In the summer, together with other geoscientists, I visited the lower reaches of the river. Beautiful Mecha (Lebedyansky district), at the Don conversations (Zadonsky district), on a karst field in the vicinity of the village. Kon-Kolodez (Khlevensky district), on the rivers and streams of Lipetsk, at the Dankovsky dolomite plant (Dankovsky district), at the outcrops of Devonian limestones in the village of Kamennaya Lubna (Lebedyansky district). In the rock outcrops, I found the following fossils - ammonites and sea lilies in the village of Kamennaya Lubna (Lebedyansky district), corals in the village of Pokrovskoe (Terbunsky district), brachiopods in Dankovo. It is these settlements that I would suggest visiting fossil seekers. The village of Pokrovskoye, Terbunsky District, Lipetsk Region is located in the center of the Russian Plain on the Central Russian Upland in the southwestern part of the Lipetsk Region, located within the black earth belt in the forest-steppe zone. It stands on the right bank of the Olym River. Here the Sredny Korotysh stream flows into it. The city of Dankov is the administrative center of the Dankovsky district of the Lipetsk region, located 86 km north-west of Lipetsk, on the picturesque banks of the Don River, not far from the place where, presumably, the Battle of Kulikovo took place in 1380. The geological structure of the Dankov dolomite deposit was formed over many millions of years on the ancient Russian platform, which is a huge tectonic structure, the crystalline basement of which is composed of such rocks as granite, crystalline schists, gneisses and other rocks of the Archean-Proterozoic age, and from above they are covered by sedimentary strata sediments represented by limestones, dolomites, marls, clays, sandstones and other rocks. The thickness of these deposits in the area of the Dankovskoye field is more than 600 m. Kamennaya Lubna is the village of Doktorovsky rural settlement of the Lebedyansky district of the Lipetsk region. Before the village was called Lubna. Both names are on the Lubna River. Definition of stone - on the way to the surface in these places of the stone.
2.2 Rules for collecting fossils.
Before setting off in search and collection of fossilized remains, it is important to think over and select the equipment for the job. Rocks such as clays, sands, some sandstones and occasionally even limestones are broken or crushed by hand, but this is the exception rather than a strict rule. Most breeds cannot be split without special tools. In addition, it is necessary not only to split the stone, but to remove the fossil from it, which will crumble even if it is. A paleontologist's kit should include: a geological hammer, chisel, knife, shovel, brushes, needles, and sometimes a crowbar. The geological hammer can be replaced with any other hammer that is sharpened on one side and has a flat surface on the other. Chisels should be of various sizes. A chisel can chip off large pieces of rock and remove rocks around the fossil. For the most delicate, thorough processing, very small chisels and needles are needed - they are used to prepare the sample. A well-honed knife will not hurt either. Sometimes it can be used to successfully flake off rocks. A shovel or shovel will be very effective when digging loose sandy or clayey rocks. Brushes are good for dissecting or extracting fossils from loose rocks. They will allow you to very carefully remove the neighboring rock without damaging the fossils. In this way, bone remains are sometimes removed. For wrapping samples, you can take newsprint or thicker Kraft paper. Particularly fragile specimens can be inserted with cotton wool or gauze. It is also allowed to pack samples in various boxes and geological cloth bags with a pulling rope. If some fossil has fallen apart, it can be glued together with PVA or Moment glue.
If only a fossil print remains in the rock, you can make a counterprint or an impression using plaster. Imprints can be valuable as they reflect the external sculpture of shells and shells, which is not always preserved.
To describe and sketch the cut, you need paper and pencils, an eraser and a ruler. And in my opinion, nothing can convey the features of a geological section as well as a photograph, so it is good to have a camera with you. A compass is needed to determine the location of the cut. A backpack is needed for transportation. Paleontologists have many rules for studying the locations of fossil organisms and the fossils themselves. But there are the main ones among them, the failure to fulfill which greatly lowers the value of research and fees. Two of them are the description of the investigated geological section and the drawing up of detailed labels. First, you need to make a general description of the location of the section, recording in detail its signs; where it is located, in which region, in which city, village, on the banks of a river or lake, find out its location relative to the cardinal points. The label is the passport of the fossil. The label contains basic information about it. The label is made of thick paper. Writing is done with a pencil or pen. Each of them must indicate the institution that conducts the excursion. First, the field determination of the residue is recorded, then the age, indicating the layer from which the sample was taken. This is followed by the name of the excursion site and its exact address (region, region, nearby settlements, water bodies), the date of collection, the surname of the person who collected and identified the fossil. Each fossil is assigned a field number.
2.3 Description of fossil collection sites.
Above, I indicated that I was looking for my artifacts in Dankov, Kamennaya Lubna and Pokrovsky. Outwardly, limestone outcrops at these points are similar. The outcrops are outcrops of ancient Devonian limestones, overlain by a layer of chernozem. The color of the limestone is from beige to light brown. It is difficult to accurately determine the mineral composition of the rock without laboratory analyzes, one can make an assumption: the chemical composition of pure limestones approaches the theoretical composition of calcite (56% CaO and 44% CO2), the investigated limestones are not pure, because they are not white, but have a yellow and brown tint, which means that in addition to CaCO3, they also contain impurities of iron oxides. The structure of limestone is cryptocrystalline, sometimes detrital, organogenic. The texture is homogeneous, layered, streaky, porous (samples do not scratch glass). Strength can be judged by the ability to crack under a hammer blow. To test the strength, a sample of limestone with a volume of about 200 cm3 (approximately 6x6x6 cm) was split into crushed stone with one or two blows of a hammer. A strong sample will split into 2-3 pieces, and a fragile sample into many small pieces. The investigated limestones are solid. The systems of cracks in the limestone massif initially set the block structure, which makes it possible to separate blocks - slabs (natural jointing), thickness (thickness) of slabs from several tens of centimeters to several meters. In the thickness of the limestone, inclusions can be distinguished - lithomorphic, in the form of clay and sand, biomorphic, in the form of fossilized remains of shells of marine animals, corals. It is not possible to determine the total thickness of limestone deposits, but the textbook "Geography of the Lipetsk Region" says that the thickness reaches hundreds of meters. Moreover, the upper, younger layers are wider than the lower, previously deposited horizons; the latter lie on the older rocks underlying them.
2.4. Description and determination of the approximate species belonging of the found animal fossils.
I found fossils of four types of marine animals: ammonites, corals, brachiopods, and sea lilies. The ammonite fossil is located in limestone, its size is 10 * 7 cm, the pattern of the shell relief is clearly visible on it, and at the fracture one can see the partitions between the chambers, their diameter is small, so it can be assumed that the found area was located closer to the end of the shell.
Ammonites (Ammonoidea) are an extinct subclass of cephalopods that existed from the Devonian to the Cretaceous. In 1789, the French zoologist Jean Bruegier gave them the Latin name "ammonitos" in honor of the ancient Egyptian solar deity Amun of Thebes, depicted with twisted ram horns that resemble an ammonite shell. In those days, only one genus of ammonites was known, and now there are about 3 thousand of them, descriptions of new species are constantly appearing. Most of the ammonites had an outer shell, consisting of several whorls located in one plane, touching each other or overlapping each other to varying degrees. Such shells are called monomorphic. The ammonite shell was divided into many chambers, and the one closest to the mouth was inhabited. The length of the living chamber varies from 0.5 to 2 turns. Most of the chambers were filled with gas (air chambers), several with liquid (hydrostatic chambers). Most of the ammonites belong to the ecological group of nekton, that is, organisms floating freely in the water column. However, some forms were representatives of the benthic (bottom) community. According to the way of feeding, the ammonites were predators. Other mollusks and small fish became prey for ammonites. Ammonites are the leading fossils of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits. The simplest ammonites appeared in the Silurian period, and the true ammonites reached their greatest development in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, at the end of the Cretaceous era this diverse and rich group of mollusks completely disappeared. Fossilized remains of sea lilies are sections of the stem 2.5 cm and 3.5 cm long, on which segments are clearly distinguishable; in one specimen, an intestinal cavity is visible.
Sea lilies or crinoids (Crinoidea) are benthic animals with a predominantly sedentary lifestyle. These are animals belonging to the type of echinoderms (Echinodermata), and not plants at all, as the name suggests. They exist from the Ordovician to the present. The body consists of a stem, calyx and brachioli - arms. Stems and arms consist of segments of various shapes, during the life of an animal they are connected by muscles, in a fossil state they often fall apart. Filters by type of food. Now these are deep animals, earlier, when there was less pressure from predators, they lived in shallow water. The maximum flowering was experienced at the end of the Paleozoic. Most often, there are segments of various shapes and pieces of stems, much less often - calyxes. Sometimes whole sea lilies are found in limestone, but such finds are very rare. The diameter of the segments is from a few millimeters to 2 centimeters. The stem length is up to 20 meters in fossil forms. Fossils of brachiopods in limestone I have met very often, one of the samples found contains 15 distinct shells, on which the relief is clearly visible, and a lot of fragments. Other specimens contain either several prints or single specimens. The size of the shells is 0.6 - 2 cm * 0.4 - 1.5 cm.
Brachiopod shells - the same integral component of the marine fauna of the Paleozoic (they were very widespread in the Devonian and Carboniferous), as ammonites in the Mesozoic, are currently represented on Earth by only 200 species. In some places, brachiopods still form huge clusters, but now the ecological niches that brachiopods occupied in the Paleozoic and at the beginning of the Mesozoic are occupied by bivalve mollusks, and brachiopods are pushed back to the depths and into cold waters. Brachiopods are not molluscs, although they have a bivalve shell, but an independent type of marine shell animals (Brachiopoda). According to many paleontologists, they are related to bryozoans, although at first glance there is little in common between them. Typically, brachiopods attach to the bottom with a thick, muscular leg. Filters by type of food. Sometimes brachiopods are called brachiopods - Brachiopoda, from the Greek. brachion - shoulder and podos - leg. The shell valves in brachiopods are different; they are called abdominal and dorsal. This distinguishes them from mollusks, in which the shell valves - right and left, are symmetrical to each other. In brachiopods, the valves are not the same; the right and left parts of one valve are symmetrical. The size of brachiopod shells rarely exceeds 7-10 centimeters.
Coral fossils were found on limestone, size 10 cm * 6 cm.These corals are colonial, multiplied by budding, individual segments are visible, the size of which is about 1 cm.
Representatives of the coral class are already known from very ancient Silurian sediments and are found in more or less significant quantities in sediments of all systems up to the Quaternary, and in some places among marine sediments they form significant reef-like accumulations. The organization of Paleozoic corals is so peculiar that their place in the system adopted for the classification of living corals has not yet been precisely established. Nowadays non-existent groups of Paleozoic corals are divided into - Zoantharia rugosa, which had the form of bowls or cones, more or less curved, sometimes reached a significant size, had numerous, well-developed stellate plates and a wrinkled outer shell; Zoantharia tabulata - colonies of accrete columns with a few short stellate plates of parallel transverse septa, from which they got their name; and tubular corals - consisted of tubular cells, sometimes free-lying, sometimes intertwining, forming sod-like masses. Corals Z. rugosa are the leading form of the lower horizons of the Middle Devonian system.
2.5 General characteristics of the features of the nature of the Devonian period of the Paleozoic era of the Lipetsk region.
On a stratigraphic scale, the Devonian period is the period following the Silurian and preceding the Carboniferous. It lasted about 55 million years and ended about 345 million years ago. Devon is divided into 3 sections (upper, middle, lower). The name of this period comes from the name "Devonshire" - a county in southwestern England, where the system of Devonian strata was first identified by scientists in 1839. The beginning of the period was characterized by the retreat of the sea and the accumulation of thick continental red-colored sediments; the climate was continental and arid. In the early Devonian, the Caledonian folding ended, later there were large transgressions. Mid Devonian - the era of diving; increase in marine transgressions, intensification of volcanic activity; climate warming. End of the period - reduction of transgressions, beginning of Hercynian folding, regression of the sea. Devon is considered one of the most interesting stages in the evolution of life on Earth. At the beginning of this period, organisms that had appeared in previous geological eras continued to develop slowly and gradually in the seas. And in the middle of the Devonian there was an unprecedented flowering of marine fauna. Warm waters of the Devonian seas were abundantly inhabited by cephalopods, corals and brachiopods. Among echinoderms, the most common during this period were sea lilies, starfish and sea urchins. Cephalopods felt great in the Devonian seas. Corals, sea lilies, and also benthic attached animals - brachiopods and bryozoans - have reached extraordinary development. Together they created colossal reef structures. Of particular interest to modern paleontologists are arthropods living in the Devonian seas - trilobites, which lived on Earth for 300 million years and became completely extinct for unknown reasons. Unfortunately, I did not find a fossilized trilobite, but I studied its features in the literature. But still, scientists consider the Devonian - first of all, the "era of fish". I also did not find their fossilized remains, but I believe that this is still ahead, since I just started doing this work. In the literature, I found a description of a major event in the Devonian biosphere - the Devonian extinction - mass extinction species in the late Devonian, one of the largest extinctions of flora and fauna in the history of the Earth. In total, 19% of families and 50% of genera died out. The extinctions were accompanied by widespread oceanic anoxia, that is, a lack of oxygen, which prevented the decay of organisms, and predisposed to the preservation and accumulation of organic matter. Probably, it is thanks to this that we can now get acquainted with the nature of the Devonian from the fossils. The Devonian crisis primarily affected marine ecosystems, and affected shallow, thermophilic organisms much more strongly than organisms that preferred cold water. The most important group affected by the extinction were reef-forming organisms, in addition, the following groups were very strongly affected by the extinction: brachiopods, trilobites, ammonites. Among the most probable causes of extinction in the literature is called - the fall of meteorites. It is argued that it was the fall of the meteorite that was the primary cause of the Devonian extinction, but no reliable evidence of an extraterrestrial impact has been found. Although some indirect evidence of a meteorite falling in Devonian sediments is observed (iridium anomalies and microspheres (microscopic balls of fused rock)), it is possible that the formation of these anomalies is due to other reasons.
3. General conclusions on the study and an approximate route for amateur paleontologists in the Lipetsk region.
After analyzing my observations, findings and literature, I came to the conclusion that:
On the territory of the Lipetsk region there are a large number of limestone outcrops, especially along the river valleys - the Don and its tributaries
age of limestones is defined as Devonian (according to literature)
limestones are sedimentary organic rock - uh then the skeletons and shells of ancient organisms that lived millions of years ago. Sinking to the bottom of the seas and oceans, they caked and cemented.
the predominant fossils in Devonian limestones are brachiopods, sea lilies, ammonites and corals
the presence of a large number of fossils of marine animals indicates that the territory of the region was some time ago the bottom of the sea
knowing that corals cannot live at great depths and in cold waters, it can be assumed that the Devonian seas were shallow and warm
the large thickness of limestone deposits indicates a high density of the inhabitants of the Devonian seas
the nature of the Devonian in the Lipetsk region is absolutely different from the modern
For paleontologists - amateurs wishing to travel around the Lipetsk region, we recommend the Don Valley. There are a huge number of objects on which you can try to find fossil artifacts. I would suggest the following travel route: Dankov (quarry of a dolomite plant) - Lebedyan (Tyapkina Gora - Lebedyanskiy Devonian) - s. Kamennaya Lubna and a quarry in the village of Znobilovka (Lebedyansky district) - Donskiye Besedy and a safari park in the village of Kamenka (Zadonsky district) - the right bank of the Olym river in the village of Pokrovskoye (Terbunsky district). I believe that at these points you can find many more interesting fossils (maybe even fish and trilobites), you just need a little luck, as well as make an effort and be careful.
Conclusion
Paleontology is the science of how life originated and developed on our planet, what and why happened on our Earth. By definition, paleontology is the science of the biological cycle: paleos is ancient, ontos is a creature; the science of ancient creatures. By and large, paleontology must answer questions; where we come from, who we are, where we go. The past is a window to the future. After doing my little research, I realized that there is nothing permanent in nature - everything develops, becomes more complex, changes. It is possible that in a million years the nature of my native land will change beyond recognition and someone, like me, will try to touch the past. Man is a very inquisitive creature, which means that paleontology, like all geology, is doomed to a long, long existence. And of course I will continue to search and study fossils in order to learn more about the distant past of the land in which I live - the Lipetsk region. I would like to finish my work with a poem by Anatoly Tsepin:
You won't find footprints on our roads -
We are the first to lay them.
From noisy, tired, big cities
We run away every summer. We graze in the wild by the blue water, We walk the taiga far away, We are not looking for a reward for our labors, And you cannot lure us to Antalya.
For us the stove and fireplace replaces the fire,
And a bed of pine needles - feather beds,
But the heart is a piece of living, not a motor,
Sometimes he yearns for no reason.
Through the noisy, tired big cities, On the faces of loved ones and at home, And we retreat in our footsteps, Because there is no other way.
List of Internet resources
http://geomem.ru/mem_obj.php?id=12908&objcoord=&objokrug=%D6%E5%ED%F2%F0%E0%EB%FC%ED%FB%E9&objoblast=%CB%E8%EF%E5% F6% EA% E0% FF% 20% EE% E1% EB% E0% F1% F2% FC & objregion
Ecology
When we find common ancient seashell fossils on the beach, it's very easy to recognize them. However, there are fossils of very ancient living things, which are difficult to recognize, even for specialists.
The problem is also that many of them are poorly preserved or have come down to us in incomplete form. Unsurprisingly, until better specimens are found, fossils of long-extinct creatures will often be mistaken for entirely different species. We invite you to find out about these mysterious fossils, which at different times were mistaken for mysterious things.
1) Ammonites
Ammonites are often found in fossils, but have been misidentified for a long time. Even in ancient Greece, it was believed that these are the horns of rams. They were named after the Egyptian god Amun, who wore such horns. In ancient China they were called horn-stones for the same reason. In Nepal, they were considered as holy relics left by the god Vishnu. The Vikings believed that the Ammonites were the sacred offspring of the Jormungand serpent, turned into stone.
In the Middle Ages in Europe they were called snake stones, it was believed that these are the fossilized bodies of coiled snakes, which Christian saints turned into stones. Some enterprising traders even carved snake heads from ammonite fossils and sold them as souvenirs.
Today we know that these are just fossils of shells similar to squid creatures that lived on our planet 400 million years ago and lived until the death of the dinosaurs. More complex fossils are not only shells. You can find shell fossils along with tentacles protruding from them and shapeless heads that resemble modern nautilus molluscs.
2) Fish teeth
The fossilized remains of fish teeth have been interpreted in different ways. Some ancient fish had hard, flat molars that allowed them to crush mollusk shells. In Greece and later in Europe, these fossils were represented as magical adornments, they were often called toad stones since people believed that they were worn as ornaments on their heads by large toads. The teeth were used to make talismans; it was believed that they could cure epilepsy and poisoning.
In Japan, the fossils of shark flat teeth have been identified as claws dropped by the terrifying Tengu monsters. In Europe, shark teeth were seen as the hardened tongues of the devil.
It was only in the 17th century that the Danish anatomist Niels Stensen seriously studied these fossils and concluded that most of the found "devil's tongues" were just shark teeth. He also realized that fossils did not appear spontaneously in the ground at all, and that they were located next to the remains of long-dead ancient animals.
3) Trees
Lepidodendron is an ancient tree-like plant with a bark reminiscent of a pine cone that has become extinct long ago. The leaves of this plant were similar to the stems of grass and lepidodendron is nevertheless closer to herbs than to modern trees. Most of the European coal deposits are the remains of these ancient plants. The lepidodendron fossils are very interesting. Long tree trunks were often preserved in the fossils entirely, the height of such a trunk could reach 30 meters, and the width - about a meter.
In 19th century fairgrounds, these fossils were often displayed as the bodies of scaly snakes and dragons. People could pay a small fee to admire the ancient "monsters" and listen to fictional tales of their dramatic fate. Also, different Christian saints could appear in the stories. More complete fossils could include not only trunks, but also branches, roots, leaves and cones, which were proof that they were once trees, and not mysterious fairy creatures.
4) Foraminifera
On the Pacific coast in southern Japan, you can sometimes find unusual grains of sand. Many of them are in the form of tiny stars, less than 1 millimeter in size. Local legends say that these are the remains of unfortunate children from the divine union of two stars. These "children" died because they fell to Earth, or were killed by sea monsters living off the coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa. Their fragile skeletons are washed ashore, and this is all that remains of the poor creatures.
In fact, these are the remains of various forms of earthly life, creatures similar to amoebas, which received the name foraminifera... These creatures and their modern descendants are unicellular creatures that build a protective shell for themselves. When they die, their needle shells remain, and if you look through a microscope, you can see tiny chambers and structures in every detail.
5) Protoceratops
Dinosaurs called protoceratops were relatives of the more famous triceratops... They walked on 4 legs and were comparable in size to a large dog, although they were somewhat heavier. They definitely had a large skull with a bird's beak, in the back of which there was a bony outgrowth with holes.
Protoceratops lived in large herds, so they left behind a large number of fossils. For many people who were not yet familiar with dinosaurs, the found skulls seemed like the remains of fantastic and strange creatures. Due to their size, the Protoceratops were believed to be small lions. However, the distinctive feature of the skulls of these animals suggested that they were lions with curved beaks, like eagles. The feet of the animals looked more like the legs of eagles with claws, rather than the legs of lions. People thought the creature was a mixture of a lion and an eagle. Apparently, the legends about these creatures most likely appeared after people found the fossils of the protoceratops.
6) Belemnites
Belemnites are ancient extinct animals that resemble modern squid. Unlike squid, belemnites had 10 "arms" of equal length, which were covered with tiny hooks, and, remarkably, these marine life had a skeleton. Belemnites lived in the era of the dinosaurs and are well preserved in the fossils.
Most often, fossil remains of their skeletons are found, which are cylindrical objects with a narrowed end without any structures like tentacles. These fossilized skeletons are bullet-shaped.
In Europe, it was believed that these are "thunder arrows" - objects that fell to the ground from heaven, producing a sound of thunder when they hit the surface of the earth. They have been associated with various storm gods. Many people kept them in different parts of their homes in order to ward off lightning. Others believed that the belemnites were associated with elves and not with gods. They thought they were the fingers of the elves. People used them in various superstitious medical rituals, for example, to treat a snakebite or relieve headaches. They applied fossils to the affected area of the body and cast various spells.
7) Ankyzaurus
Ankyzaurs were one of the early dinosaur groups. These herbivores had long necks and tails and were relatives of the more familiar to us. brontosaurs and diplodocus... Anchizaurs were smaller in size than their later ancestors and grew in length by no more than 2 meters. They evolved from bipedal ancestors and did not completely stand on 4 legs, although their front legs were well adapted for movement. They climbed on their hind legs when needed and used their front legs to grab something.
The Anchizaurs have attracted particular interest due to the fact that they were initially misidentified. They were confused with a creature that would seem least like a dinosaur: a human. Strangely, the long neck and tail, lizard-like body, reptile-like skull and other features were simply ignored! Just the fact that the creature was the size of a man helped to make everyone believe that these are the remains of our ancestor.
After other fossils of these creatures were found for several decades, the name "dinosaur" was coined and people recognized that these were not human fossils at all, but reptiles. The fact that you can confuse a lizard with a person speaks of how humans are capable of delusion.
8) Mastodons and mammoths
A few thousand years ago, mastodons and mammoths roamed the icy land. They looked like elephants, but had warm fur and tusks, several meters long. Mass extinction of species, climate change and hunting have led to their extinction. Like modern elephants, these animals had very strong muscles in the trunk that were tighter than other muscles in their body.
The trunk of mammoths and mastodons required a hole in the middle of the animal's skull. Modern elephants have the same feature. People who live in areas where elephants live have seen animal skulls more than once, so they know this feature. Others, who have found the skulls of ancient elephant relatives with giant holes in the middle, imagined this creature as a huge humanoid giant with one eye socket. The legend of the Cyclops seems to have its roots in the days when people found skulls of ancient animals outside of Africa.
9) Sea urchins
Sea urchins are round spiny creatures whose fossils can usually be found off the coast. They belong to a group of animals called echinoderms. These creatures live on our planet for hundreds of millions of years, and their distant ancestors left behind a mass of fossils. Although ancient sea urchins have much in common with modern species, their fossils have long been mistaken for completely different creatures.
In England, it was believed that these were supernatural crowns, loaves of sacred bread, or magical snake eggs. In Denmark, they believed that these were "thunderstorm" stones: it was believed that they begin to release moisture before storms, which helped people to predict inclement weather.
The five lines found on the fossils of many sea urchins were considered a good sign, in India they were kept as a talisman for good luck. The magical powers associated with sea urchins reflected the way each culture interpreted them. They were believed to be able to cure a snakebite, help cook bread, protect from storms, and bring good luck.
10) Hominids
Many human relatives - monkeys - left fossils behind. These fossils were often misinterpreted before people began to think about human evolution. Fossils that have been found in Europe and America have sometimes "proven" the existence of various mythical characters mentioned in the same Bible, such as giants or demons. Others said that they were the ancestors of monkeys, although modern monkeys have very different characteristics.
Some are convinced that these skeletons belong to aliens, not fabulous monsters. Apparently, fossils found in Asia inspired people to create legends about the yeti. Some believe that some hominids could coexist with humans, so the creators of the legends were not inspired by their fossils, but by these living creatures themselves.
Even ancient Greek philosophers puzzled over the riddle of fossilized. They found fossilized sea shells high in the mountains and guessed that they were once living creatures. Hence, the philosophers assumed, this territory was once covered by the sea. Quite a fair statement! But where did all these fossils come from? How did the shells get walled up in the rocks?
Fossils are the remains and imprints of plants and animals that lived on Earth in bygone eras. It should be noted, however, that only a tiny fraction of extinct plants and animals are converted into fossils. As a rule, their remains are either eaten by other animals, or decomposed by fungi and bacteria. Very soon nothing is left of them. Shells or hard bone skeletons of living organisms persist longer, but in the end they are also destroyed. And only when the remains are buried in the ground very quickly, even before they 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, forms above it. Then his remains are soon deprived of air access 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 leaches them out of the sedimentary material itself.
Ultimately, under the weight of the upper sedimentary layers, water is displaced from the lower ones. However, the minerals remain inside and contribute to the bonding of sedimentary layers and their hardening into the 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 seem to grow into the stone and remain in it for millions of years. After a long time, the collision of 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 in it.
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. Mineral substances dissolved in water seep into the rock and the remains of the animal.
5. Water is forced out of the rock and it becomes dense and solid. 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 destroys it over time, revealing the fossils hidden in it.
Perfect fossils
The well-preserved fossils include insects and other small organisms embedded in amber. Amber is made from a sticky resin that oozes from the trunks of some tree species when their covers are damaged. This resin emits a fragrant odor that attracts insects. When they stick to the drink, they are trapped. Then the resin hardens and forms a solid transparent substance, 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 delicate and fragile fossils are found in rocks associated with coal deposits. Coal is a black, hard rock made up mostly of carbon from ancient plant remains. 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 turned out to be buried under a thick layer of silt. Accumulating rapidly, the silt soon solidified and compressed, forming mudstones and shales.
The leaves and stems of plants growing in those forests are sometimes preserved in the form of coal beds or thin black films of carbon separating layers of shale. In other cases, only imprints of tree bark, leaves or stems of ferns are preserved in rocks. Slates are easily split in the horizontal plane, and fossilized prints of whole branches with leaves can be easily identified on the newly exposed surface.
Even more interesting are the fossils that are found in the so-called nodules. 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 the limestone in great detail.
Dinosaur footprint preserved in rocks near Moenow, Arizona, USA
Traces of the past
It happens that the actual remains of an animal are not preserved, but some prints, 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 are "preserved" for millions of years. In addition to footprints, animals can leave other traces, such as furrows in sedimentary layers, when they make their way through the silt, eat detritus (organic matter in the form of particles suspended in water), or burrow into the bottom of a lake or sea. These "fossilized 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 leave a wide variety of imprints in soft silt, depending on whether they are resting, walking or feeding. Scientists assigned separate names to many of these tracks, since they had no idea what kind of animal left them.
Sometimes the dung of an animal turns into a fossil. It can be so well preserved 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, sometimes whole fish are found - the remains of a meal that the predator's body did not have time to assimilate before death.
Impressions and forms
Sometimes water, penetrating into the sediments, completely dissolves the remains of the organism buried in them, and a groove remains in this place, which exactly reproduces its former outlines. The result is the petrified form of the animal (left). Subsequently, the cavity is filled with various mineral substances, and a fossilized cast is formed with the same outlines as the disappeared animal, but does not reproduce its internal structure (right).
Footprints in stone
Fossilized dinosaur footprints 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 reveal how wide their legs were when they walked. This, in turn, provides an answer to the question of how the legs were located: on the sides of the body, like in modern lizards, or vertically downward, providing the body with more solid support. Moreover, these tracks can even determine the speed with which the dinosaur moved.
Scientists also determined which dinosaurs dragged their tail along the ground as they walked, and which held it in the air. In some areas of the United States, fossilized chains of tracks of various types of carnivorous (carnivorous) and plant-eating dinosaurs have been preserved. The tracks belonged to many animals moving in the same direction. This means that dinosaurs moved in herds or flocks. The size of the prints makes it possible to judge the number of young animals in a given herd and its location among the adult animals during the transition.
Fossil hunters' dream come true - piles of ammonites and bivalve shells in one place. This is a typical example of posthumous accumulation: fossils do not occur where death overtook animals. They were once carried away by water streams and dumped in a heap in a completely different place, where they were buried under the 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 using fossils is not nearly as easy as it might seem when looking at the pictures in this chapter. Indeed, even in those extremely rare cases when the remains of plants and animals are very quickly brought in 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 dump them into heaps, splitting solid skeletons. In this case, the heavier fragments settle and assume a different position than during life, and the lighter ones are washed off with water. Further, floods and landslides often disrupt the protective sedimentary cover that has developed over the fossils. Other plants and animals have practically no chances to survive in fossil form, since they live in areas where there is not enough sedimentary material. For example, the likelihood that the remains of forest or savannah dwellers will be carried away into a 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.
Just as detectives need to know whether a corpse has been moved or not, so paleontologists need to be sure that the fossilized remains found in a particular place belong to an animal that actually died in this place and in the same position, in what they found him. 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 was warm or cold, humid or dry. In addition, you can learn a lot about the natural environment that existed here in antiquity by studying the rocks that are characteristic of the area. But again, too often it happens that the fossil remains are carried away from the place where the animal died, and besides, along the way, they disintegrate into pieces. Moreover, some terrestrial animals are simply carried into the fruit drink, which often confuses researchers. Fossil finds that have found their last refuge far from the places where these animals and plants once perished are called posthumous accumulations.
A story with a 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, scientists came across only separate fragments of this animal, 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, the "laggania" (3) was the body, and the "peytoia" (4) was the mouth of the same animal.
How did they look in life?
One of the most exciting activities of paleontologists is assembling a whole fossil from a 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.
The first scientists-paleontologists to study fossils from the ancient Burgess shale rocks, which are 570 million years old, in the Canadian Rockies, discovered several strange animal fossils there. One of the finds looked like a rather unusual tip of the tail of a small shrimp. She was given the name anomalokaris, 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, dubbed laggania, looked like the crushed body of a sea cucumber. Later, paleontologists found the fossilized remains of lag-gania and peytoya next to each other and came to the conclusion that it was a sponge and a jellyfish sitting on it.
These fossils were then stuck on the shelves of museum cabinets, they were forgotten and remembered only a few years ago. Now a new generation of paleontologists has fished them out of dusty boxes and began to study again. Scientists noticed that all three types of fossils were often found in rocks nearby. Maybe there is some kind of connection between them? Paleontologists have carefully studied many such finds and came to a startling conclusion: the fossil data is nothing more than different parts of the body 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 eyes on stalks and a large round mouth (peitoy) with hard teeth. In front, the "strange shrimp" had a pair of limbs up to 18 cm long for grabbing food (anomalocaris). Well, the laggania turned out to be the flattened remains of the body of this animal.
Fossilized remains of a Triassic forest in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, USA. Forests can turn to stone when they are suddenly covered by the sea. In this case, the minerals contained in the seawater seep into the wood and crystallize in it, forming a solid rock. Sometimes these crystals can be seen in tree trunks with the naked eye: they give the wood a beautiful red or purple hue.
Fossils come to life
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. The ammonite shells with characteristic markings (most likely, these are the teeth marks of a mosasaur, a large marine reptile) indicate that they were often attacked by other animals. The traces of teeth of rodents on the fossil bones of various mammals indicate that these rodents ate carrion - they devoured corpses. The fossilized remains of a starfish were found surrounded by the shells of the molluscs, which it apparently ate. And lungfish are perfectly preserved in the petrified silt, where they once peacefully dozed in their burrows. Even baby dinosaurs were found, caught dead at the very moment when they hatched from eggs. But all these, alas, are very rare finds. Usually, in order to get an idea of the lifestyle of long-extinct animals, scientists have to, as it were, transfer, extrapolate to them the behavior of related modern animals - their distant descendants.
Fossil hunting gear. The head of the geological hammer has a special flat face for breaking off rock samples and a wedge-shaped tip that is pushed into the gaps between the pieces of rock to push them apart. You can also use chisels to cut a variety of stone sizes. A notepad and compass will come in handy to pinpoint the exact location of the fossil in the rock, as well as the direction of the rock in a quarry or cliff. A handheld magnifier can help you identify tiny fossils such as fish teeth or scales. Some geologists prefer to carry an acidic solution with them, with which they extract fragile fossils from the rock, but it is still better to do this in the laboratory: there they usually carry out more delicate operations using a variety of needles, tweezers and scrapers. The electrical appliance presented here is a vibrator, it is used to loosen pieces of rock
Fossil hunt
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 waste and even in your own vegetable garden. But all of them are found only in sedimentary rocks - limestone, chalk, sandstone, mudstone, clay or slate shale.
To become a good fossil hunter, it is best to seek advice from experienced professionals. Find out if there are geological societies or museums nearby that organize fossil expeditions. There you will be shown the most promising places for searches and will explain where the fossils are usually found.
An artificially colored X-ray allows you to see the internal structure of the fossil ammonite. It shows thin walls separating the inner chambers of the shell.
Homework
As with any detective, you will need to find out as much as possible about the "clues" you are hunting. Check out your local library and find out what types of rocks are found in your area. The library should have maps showing these breeds. How old are they? What fossils do you expect to find in them? Go to the local history museum, see what fossils were found in this 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 in advance what you are looking for.
A geologist removes fossilized dinosaur bones from rock with a very fine chisel in Dinosaur National Park, USA.
What The Fossils Talk About
Environment. Fossils allow us to determine the type of environment in which a given rock was formed. Climate. The fossils can be used to judge the nature of the climate of a given area in ancient times. Evolution. Fossils allow us to trace how biological forms have changed over millions of years.
Dating rocks. Fossils help establish the age of the rocks containing them, as well as trace the movements of the continents.
Safety first
It is imperative to properly prepare for the fossil trek. Wandering at the bottom of a cliff or climbing the walls of a quarry is not safe. First of all, you should get the consent of the owners of the area to conduct such research there. They, in turn, will be able to warn you of possible dangers. Quarries and cliffs are generally desolate and unsafe places, and you should never go there alone. When leaving, be sure to leave a note or tell your family where you can be found.
Professional fossil hunters, paleontologists, usually take the pieces of rock containing the fossils to their laboratory. If the fossils are very fragile or badly crumbled, they are covered with a protective layer of gypsum or polystyrene before being freed from the rock. In the lab, scientists use dental drills, high-pressure water jets, and even acid solutions to extract their findings from a companion rock. Often, before starting 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 out all the details and take many photographs of both the fossil itself and everything that surrounded it.
Put on some kind of hard hat on your head - say, a motorcycle helmet is fine. Do not start banging on the rock with a hammer without wearing safety glasses or at least simple goggles: the smallest particles flying off the rock at high speed can seriously damage your eyes. Do not try to hammer the fossil out of the cliff wall. The resulting vibrations can quickly loosen the rock above your head and cause rockfall. Typically, you will be able to find a ton of fossils in the debris 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 found a given fossil. This means that you should not only write down the name of the cliff itself, quarry or construction site, but also describe the specific location where you found the fossil. Was it in a large piece of rock or in a small one? Did you find it near the cliff or directly in the ground? Were there any other fossils nearby? If so, which ones? How were the fossils located in the rock? All this data will help you learn more about the animal's lifestyle and how it died. Try to sketch where you found your trophy. It will be easier to do this with squared paper. You can of course take a photo of this location, but drawing often allows you to better capture the details of the landscape.
Photos and drawings will prove to be very useful if you are unable to take the fossils you find home. In some cases, you can make a plaster cast of the fossil or sculpt a mold out of plasticine. Even if the fossil is firmly embedded in the rock, it can tell you a lot about the history of the area.
Be sure to bring packing materials to carry the fossils with you. Large, sturdy specimens can be wrapped in newsprint and placed in a plastic bag. Small fossils are best placed in a plastic jar filled 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 in your collection.
Paleontologists usually cover the fossil bones with a layer of gypsum to prevent them from breaking or cracking during transport to the museum. To do this, the bandages are moistened in a gypsum solution and wrapped around the fossils or pieces of rock inside which they are located.
History of "Claws"
In 1983, English amateur paleontologist William Walker searched for fossils in a clay quarry in Surrey. Suddenly he noticed a large round block of stone, from which a small piece of bone was sticking out. Walker split this block with a hammer, and pieces of a huge claw almost 35 cm long fell out.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 equipped 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. The unknown dinosaur was nicknamed "Claws".
How the "Claws" were saved
To keep the bones from drying out and cracking, scientists put plaster casts on some of them. The rock containing the fossils was carefully removed using special equipment. Then the bones were strengthened by soaking them in resin. Finally, copies of the bones were made from fiberglass and plastic for sending 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 type of dinosaur. They called her bari-onyx walkerie. Baryonyx in Greek means "heavy claw", and the word walkeri was added in honor of the discoverer of the baryonyx, William Walker. The length of the baryonyx reached 9-10 m. Apparently, it moved on its hind legs, and its height was about 4 m. The "Claws" weighed about two tons. Its elongated, narrow muzzle and mouth with many teeth resembled that of a modern crocodile; this suggested that the baryonyx ate fish. Fish teeth and scales were found in the dinosaur's stomach. Found a long claw, apparently, flaunted on his front thumb. It is difficult to say why this claw served the baryonyx - for catching fish? Or maybe he caught her in the mouth like crocodiles?
The clay pit where the Claws met 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 the baryonyx, his corpse was washed into the lake, where he was quickly buried under a layer of ooze and silt. In the same layers, it was possible to find the remains of some varieties of herbivorous dinosaurs, including the late iguanodon. However, the baryonyx is the only carnivorous dinosaur species known from rocks of this age around the globe. Thirty years ago, similar bones were found in the Sahara Desert, and it is likely that dinosaurs related to the baryonyx were distributed over a vast territory - from modern England to North Africa.
Craft tools
To split the rock and extract the fossil from it, you will need a geological hammer (the one with the large flat end). A set of chisels specially designed for working with stone will help you clear out excess rock from your find. But be extremely careful: you can easily smash the fossil itself. The soft rock can be scraped off with an old kitchen knife, and a toothbrush will do just fine to remove dust and adhering particles from the fossil.
A paleontologist removes rock debris 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 thinner engraving tool.
Most of us think that when the Earth formed, life immediately appeared in the seas. This is partly true, but no one knows exactly how the first life came about. And having appeared, life immediately began to influence the surface of the planet. Without plants that crumble rocks into sediment, for example, there would not be enough material to form tectonic plates, and therefore continents. Without plants, the Earth could become just a watery world.
Believe it or not, more complex life can even change the structure of global ice ages, making them less severe, with the help of "". The intermittent pattern of freezing and thawing goes back billions of years when the Earth did not have the complex web of life that exists today. Then the glaciers stretched from the poles to the equator, breaking the entire planetary foundation.
Since then, as more and more life has filled the surface and seas, huge glaciers have formed on the glacial Earth at both poles, stretching a few fingers in latitude terms that never reach the equator.
542 million years ago, something mysterious happened on Earth
Experts call the sudden increase in the diversity and richness of the Earth's fossil record, which began 542 million years ago, the "Cambrian Explosion." He puzzled Charles Darwin. Why did all the ancestors of modern animals appear literally overnight, in a geological sense?
One expert thinks that there was life before the Cambrian, but it didn't have any hard parts. Scientists analyzed soft-bodied Precambrian fossils, some of which have nothing to do with any form of modern life today, as well as young Cambrian soft-bodied fossils from Canada. It turned out that multicellular life was developed at least 50 million years before the Cambrian "explosion". Scientists don't understand where the hard parts came from, perhaps a genetic mutation caused a cascading effect that led to the sudden development of shells and skeletons. However, not everyone agrees with this theory. There is no exact answer to the question of what happened to life on Earth 542 million years ago.
The first land plants could cause a mass extinction
During the Devonian, 150 million years after the Cambrian, it was good to be born a fish at the top of the food chain. Apart from a few lost plants and animals exploring the land, all life lived in the sea. After tens of millions of years, everyone came out of the sea onto land, where tall forests of ferns, mosses and mushrooms appeared.
And then the sea creatures began to die. At least 70% of all invertebrates in the sea have gradually disappeared. The Devonian Extinction has become one of the ten largest mass extinctions in Earth's history.
Many experts believe that land plants were to blame. They say the first forests created soil that shattered rocks into minerals, which eventually leaked into the ocean, causing algal blooms. These algae consumed all the oxygen, and the sea creatures were suffocating. Worse, the algae were then consumed by other organisms and became hydrogen sulfide. He turned the sea water into acid. Plants also could not escape. They sucked enough carbon dioxide out of the air to trigger an ice age that wiped out many of them too.
Fortunately, there are a few species left that survived even these hellish conditions at sea or on land.
Ancient life knew how to adapt
There was never a complete extinction of species, even when a massive asteroid hit the planet. For example, in the early days of the Earth, the oxygen produced was poisonous to many early life forms. While many of the oxygen-haters have died, others have adapted and gotten harder. Extinction happened from time to time, but Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park was right when he said that life will always find a way to keep going.
According to the fossil record, survival and extinction had a greater impact on demographics. If a large group of species were scattered around the world, there was a chance that at least one or two individuals would survive the extinction. Other conditions include environmental conditions and genetic factors that make a species vulnerable or allow it to adapt.
Horseshoe crabs were the best - they survived four major mass extinctions and countless smaller ones.
The search for Martian fossils is changing our understanding of Earth
What is a Fossil? At first glance, this is all that has been dug out of the ground, but this approach can be erroneous when we try to understand ancient life.
At the moment, attention is riveted to Mars, because in addition to Earth, this planet offers the most friendly planetary climate for life. Once upon a time there were even rivers and lakes. If life existed in these ancient waters, fossils may have remained. This begs the obvious question. If we are trying to understand what life was like on Earth 542 million years ago, how do we define Martian remains as 4 billion years old?
Astrobiologists are working on this without disdaining the help of paleontologists. Understanding what ancient fossils on Mars might be like allows scientists to hone their attitude towards what is not fossilized on Earth.
Fossil sites
Most of the fossils we saw were probably formed in water. Water is good for making fossils. The land is not very good. In shallow waters near the beach, for example, the abundance of rainfall from rivers and streams quickly buries molluscs and other sea creatures, preserving them.
Tropical forest rain can be as plentiful and intense as a shallow sea shelf, but it cannot form many fossils. Plants and animals that die in it will quickly decompose due to moisture. In addition, the predators will quickly take away the corpses, and the rest will be destroyed by wind and rain.
Stagnant water in lowlands such as swamps and lagoons is also suitable because it does not contain much oxygen and few decay organisms live in it. In addition, there is also a shift in fossils towards bodies with hard parts, as well as groups of animals and plants that are large, long-lived, and dispersed over a wide geographic area. Time also affects. Geological processes such as mountain structure and plate subduction tend to erase fossils, making it difficult to find the oldest ones.
Fossils rarely resemble a living thing
The physical processes after a plant or animal dies are complex and messy. There is a separate area of science that studies these processes. And while it certainly helps a lot, it doesn't provide the perfect map of the original living creature. Some intact fossils, such as insects and carnivorous plants trapped in amber, are the exception, but they are all relatively young. For the most part, only a small part of the organism remains. And as far as we know, fossilization occurs only in the hard and hard parts of a plant or animal, so experts must reconstruct the animals from a pair of teeth and, with luck, a few bones.
Paleoartists use fossil data to reconstruct ancient living things, but they fill in the gaps with details taken from modern descendants of a plant or animal. Often new discoveries are confirmed by reconstructions. Sometimes - more often in the case of feathered dinosaurs - the first reconstructions are inaccurate.
Not all fossils are petrified
Scientists love to cling to words. A paleontologist describing a tree 200 million years old that has turned to stone may call it “mineralized” or “replaced” rather than petrified.
Mineralization occurs because there are empty cavities in the tree. Suppose a tree falls into a lake that contains a lot of dissolved minerals from a nearby volcano that has released its ash stuff into the water. These minerals, especially silicates, enter the wood, fill the pores and other cavities, so parts of the wood become trapped in the stone and are preserved.
The tree can also be replaced. This is a longer process. Suppose our tree did not fall into the lake when it fell, but went into the soil. Groundwater began to seep and after a certain geological time, minerals replaced the entire tree, all the woody parts, molecule by molecule. All petrified trees are fine, but paleontologists are getting more information from wood that has undergone molecular replacement rather than from mineralized wood.
It turns out that the saber-toothed "tiger" was not the only ancient creature with long teeth. Sabretooth is an example of convergent evolution, where unrelated species independently develop the same useful function. Sabertooths were useful for all kinds of predators who had to hunt animals larger than them.
There are many other examples of convergent evolution. Modern giraffes, for example, are not associated with dinosaurs, but have the same long necks as brachiosaurs and other dinosaurs. The long-extinct mammal Castorocauda looked and behaved like a modern beaver, although the two are not related.
One of the strangest cases of convergent evolution involves us. Koalas have fingerprints that look just like ours, although they are marsupials (they have bags on their belly) and we are placental (our unborn young are fed through the placenta). Scientists believe that koalas may have developed tiny curls on their fingers to make it easier for them to climb trees, as we have done in the past.
Ancient animals live and thrive today
It often happens that some strange species of animals or plants, which everyone already thought of as extinct, turns out to be alive and well. We think of them as relics, not suspecting that there are still many ancient organisms on Earth that have hardly undergone any changes.
As we noted, horseshoe crabs have survived many mass extinctions. But they are not alone. The very cyanobacteria that once killed a lot of life on Earth by providing oxygen billions of years ago are also alive and well. also perfectly show themselves as an ancient life. For example, rove beetles date back to the Triassic period (more than 200 million years ago). Today, this family of beetles probably contains the most living organisms in the world. And their ancestors were probably familiar with Triassic water bugs, like those that sometimes appear in ponds and scare people.
Most surprisingly, some species of sulfur-producing anaerobic bacteria, which were among the first living organisms on Earth, now live with us. Moreover, they are one of those microbes that inhabit our digestive tract. Luckily for us, Earth's atmosphere has improved dramatically over the years. Or most of them, at least so.
