WHAT IS THE STORY OF THE FOSSILS? 



This fossil fish lived in recent geological time. 



Wright P 

 How do we know this ? 



of rock, and the characters we read are the imprints left 

 by the living things that inhabited the earth in past 

 ages. Moving water deposited sediments in oceans, 

 ponds, and pools of streams. Plants and animals living 

 near these places were often buried in these sediments 

 and as time went on and the sediment became rock, the 

 remains of the living things were preserved. Sometimes 

 they were the undecayed parts of plants and animals, 

 sometimes the skeleton, often only an impression, such 

 as a footprint or a space once occupied by the soft body. 

 Any such trace or remains of former life is called a fossil. 

 The story told us by these fossil remains is not very 

 complete, but it is plain enough to show us a number of 

 very interesting things. The first is that the earth has 

 been inhabited by living things for a very, very long time. 

 Geologists used to think it was millions of years, but they 

 now believe it a much longer period. New ways of esti- 

 mating the age of the earth have been found, one by 



